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Friday, June 28, 2013

Time Traveler

Good Morning Friday Fiction Fans,
I hope you all had a good week. It's been a hot week here. Yesterday it was 102 degrees with a heat index of I'm not sure what! And the humidity is really bad! It is supposed to cool off some tonight and be only in the mid 80s tomorrow which would be wonderful!

This week has been pretty good. On Friday evening my Heart-Sister came down and spent the night and we played tennis in the morning and spent the rest of the day talking. She had to go home that evening. It sure was good to have her even for a little while.
Most of this week has been full of working on getting Triple Creek Ranch corrected and compiled into chapters and the chapter titles thought of. I also had to try and find pictures to be models for my characters so my illustrator would have something to go off of. That took a while!
I've also been writing in the evenings. The last two evenings I've actually started earlier than I have for a long time and was able to get a lot written. Last night I wrote 2,000 words of the "sequel" to "The Graham Quartet and the Lonely Cabin." (Hmm, is a sequel the same length at the first part or can it be a different length? Maybe this is just the rest of the story and not a sequel. I guess you'll have to read it and decide.)

But . . . My big new adventure that is going to begin next Wednesday is that my best friend and I will be driving up to Canada to visit her twin sister and my other best friend! Neither one of us has ever gone on such a long road trip with just another girl. And though I've had a passport for several years, I've still never been out of the country! The planning is pretty exciting, but it is hard to believe we're really going to do this! So, if you happen to think about us on the 3rd, 4th or 5th you can pray for safety as we drive. We'll only be going about 3 hours on Wednesday, but on the 4th we'll be driving about 11 hours. Then we're crossing the border on the 5th. (Next Friday.) And we'll be gone for two weeks! We won't be getting home until the 16th.
But don't worry, I will have something scheduled to post on the 5th and the 12th. If I have time and internet, I'll get on and update the posts before they post so you'll know how things are going. :)

Now I wrote something the other night to post, but it turned out to be a flop. I almost never have a flop when I write but I guess all authors do some times. That really was a problem, however, because I had been counting on that story to post today. So I scrambled. And I searched through my files hoping I'd discover something I hadn't posted yet. At last I did. It was a story I'd written for a paper some friends were writing, but I never posted it here. It's not as long as usual and was written several years ago, but I hope you enjoy it. It's at least better than the flop. :)

Time Traveler

    Panting after their rapid climb up the steep mountain, Wallace and Morgan paused before the little cabin.
    “I wonder where we’ll go this time,” Morgan wondered when she could speak.
    Her brother shrugged and opened the door. Once you pushed that time button you never knew where you would end up. This time would be no different they were both certain.
    Climbing in the strange machine and taking a deep breath, Wallace asked, “Are you ready?”
    “Ready,” his sister replied.
    A whirl, a roar and everything went black; the seats shook and then all at once they heard shouts and cries as though a great throng of people were nearby.
    “Where are we?” Morgan whispered, as they were still in the dark.
    “I don’t know. Maybe this is a closet.” As he spoke, Wallace was feeling around. “Ah, here is a door handle,” he exclaimed. Giving the door a shove, it opened to reveal a room of some sort. The sound of people was coming from outside though.
    Quickly, with scarcely a glance about them, the two children dashed through the room into another which proved to be a shop of some sort. Out the windows they were able to see the crowd lined up, talking and making such a lot of noise.
    Gripping each other’s hands so as not to become separated, they opened the door and began to slowly push and shove their way through the men, women and children until they reached the edge of the street.
    “Wow!” shouted Morgan as she saw the tall buildings across the street and then, looking up, noticed the equally tall ones behind them. “Wallace, look at all the people in the windows!”
    Wallace looked, completely puzzled. It was evident that they were in a large city and the people spoke English for he caught stray words here and there like “Solo” “Lone Eagle” “Received Flying Cross” and “Paris.” However, before he could figure it out, a sudden shout was heard.
    “They’re coming!”
    Instantly thousands of throats filled the air with cheer upon cheer while pieces of paper began floating from the windows above.
    Morgan and Wallace joined in the cheers for it was impossible not to shout when everyone around you was, even if you didn’t know what or who you were cheering.
    Down the street came policemen mounted on horses. There were also soldiers, some of whom carried flags.
    “I think that is New York’s flag, Morgan,” Wallace pointed. That must mean they were in New York. Probably in New York City.
    Then a car, with mounted riders for escorts on either side, came into view. In the car a young looking man sat on the back with a grin on his face and waved to the people. All at once the ticker tape which had only come down slowly before, began to pour from the sky or so it seemed. Millions upon millions of pieces; so many that it almost looked like a blizzard though it was much too warm for snow.
    As the parade drew closer, Morgan, standing on tiptoe, shouted in her brother’s ear, “I’ve seen that guy before.”
    “So have I,” Wallace hollered back in return, “but where? When?”
    “Lindy! Lindy! Lindy!” the crowd chanted.
    “Hurrah for the Spirit of St. Louis!” someone in the crowd behind the children bellowed.
    That was it! Wallace gasped in excitement, his eyes wide with delight and excitement.
    Without thinking what he was doing, he dashed forward, darted before a horse and reached the side of the car. Looking up, he saw his hero, the daredevil barnstormer, the first to cross the ocean in an airplane flying solo, the great Charles Lindbergh himself!
    As he looked up at the young man with his infectious grin, Lindbergh reached out his hand and quickly grasped that of Wallace. It was only a brief handclasp for someone jerked him back away from the car, but he had touched him! He had shaken his hand! What a story to tell back home!
    “Wallace!”
    Morgan was shaking his arm and shouting at him. He turned to look at her.
    “Did you really get to touch him?” she shouted. “For real?”
    Still astonished that it had happened, Wallace could only nod and stare at his hand.
    The rest of the parade passed, but neither children took much notice. They had seen Charles Lindbergh! The crowd pushed them along with its masses until, gradually disappearing from around them, they were left standing together on a sidewalk.
    There was a blast of a horn, a roar and everything went black.

    Opening their eyes, Wallace and Morgan climbed out of the time traveler and looked at each other with starry eyes.
    “Wait till we tell those at home what happened to us!” Morgan breathed.
    But Wallace shook his head. “They’ll never believe us. Never.”

Did you enjoy it?
How would you like to travel back in time for a brief visit?
What would you like to experience?

P.S. If this was too short for you, go and read "The Graham Quartet and the Lonely Cabin" because next week you'll get the next part of it.

5 comments:

Emily Sinclair said...

I loved this, really I did. I love time travel and I dream about it all the time. I made up stories for years about going back and time and stuff, and they never grow old. I still write them, or I bring my characters to the future. I believe it's every writer's dream to go back in time...

Have a nice trip in Canada! I look forward to hearing how it goes!

-Calamity Rene

Abigail in WI said...

Hope you have an awesome time in Canada!! I can imagine how excited you must be!!:)

Rebekah said...

Thanks girls! I'm sure I'll have all kinds of fun in Canada and I'll try to share some of it with you. Who knows, maybe I'll get inspired with another story. (Not that I need something else to write at this time.)

Anonymous said...

you should post more often! please?

Rebekah said...

:) I'm glad you are enjoying my stories, Anonymous. If I had more time and more things written, I'd love to be able to post more often. Unfortunately I don't. Now and then I will get a lot written and post twice a week for a few times or maybe even oftener than that. But since I'm getting ready to go on vacation right now, and don't really have anything extra to post, you'll have to wait. :)
If you want something to read that will take you a while, you might try my book "Home Fires of the Great War." It's really long. :)