The Story Telling Game – Nov./Dec.

Your mind starts to wonder as the shimmering light plays off the key, mesmerizing you with highlights of dancing purple, green and golden yellow sparkles.

You furrow your brow and concentrate as you look closer at the key. Some words start to appear, as if melting into view.

“Find the place I unlock” you read. “What place?” you question, as if the key could answer you, “And where? There doesn’t seem to be ANYTHING around here…” you huff as you look up and down the shoreline.

You slowly lean over the left side of your bed, and peering down with one eye closed, you gaze upon the key from your dream! How can this be, you ask yourself!? You look around and the room seems normal… You Jump out of bed taking the key with you, and pinch yourself as you run down the stairs! The rest of the house seems normal… A voice that didn’t come from any particular direction whispers, “open the door”. You reach for the front door, when a bright light blinds you. Slowly, your vision adjusts, and you cannot believe your eyes…

You pause. The voice is familiar, but the situation is not. And despite the abundant wonder of your current surroundings your mother didn’t raise any fools! “Who are you!? One moment I’m dreaming in bed and the next I’m here dressed only in my pajamas! I’m not taking another step until I get some sort of explanation!”

You sweat a little nervously as you wait and shuffle your bare feet in the damp moss. “I wish I’d put on some shoes….”

[Note not in the story – I hope that somebody has figured out an ending for this thing. I know a way to get off the beach, but I have no idea where the story goes from there!]

There is a bottle lying by your foot. You almost roll your eyes as you think, “A bottle on a beach, what a cliche, all I need now is a message inside. Of course, a message might tell me what is going on!” Looking closer, you see that there is indeed paper in the bottle, and a small ornate key as well! You pick up the bottle and try to open it but soon decide that your fingers aren’t the right tools for the job. Twisting and prying at the cork stopper only breaks your fingernails. Maybe you can break the bottle instead.

You start to search for a useful rock and quickly realize that you should not have allowed yourself to be distracted by the bottle. You have a much bigger problem! The wind has died and the fog that covered the lake is rolling over the beach. You can no longer see or hear the water. In fact, you are not sure where the water is. A long, low cry echoes through the fog and another answers it. You really wish you could believe that they are foghorns. Fighting down panic, you look around and see a few spots of light shining dimly through the mist behind you. Everything else is hidden by the fog.

“Courage and faith” you remind yourself as you walk slowly toward the closest light, praying that you are not headed for the lake. As you get nearer you are delighted to see that the light is coming from a shimmering arch. Beyond the arch is a staircase that goes up as far as you can see. Maybe these are the stairs that brought you here, maybe they’re not, but they give you a way off this god-forsaken beach. Taking a deep breath, and gripping the bottle tightly, you begin to climb. …

(Note, not in the story but so far this seems to be going in circles and just as something is about to, something stops the story from progressing. I wanted to contribute but before but felt like it was not moving forward so sorry to jump in but I think we need to get the story moving to a point where more people can contribute. We have already determined the character is awake so what happens next besides waking up out of a dream again, which has already happened.)

Struggling to keep your eyes open, your head spinning, you hear faint music coming from ahead and want to keep going but look back at the falling bottle and decide to run down the stairs after it. It is still rolling as you leap down after it until you hear a sudden crash as it lands back on the beach. You reach the last stair and peer down at the now cracked open bottle that hit a rock at the bottom luckily. Inside the broken pieces, you careful reach down and pick up the note and key and suddenly the music you heard gets louder, beckoning you to come back up the stairs. You quickly look at the note for an answer, a clue, anything and to your surprise find what looks like ancient writing in a language you do not know, almost like hieroglyphics with symbols in what appears to be a few sentences.

You sigh as you realize this is not going to help you at this moment but you put the note and key in your pocket. You stare back up the stairs and the light that was emanating from the top seems to be getting brighter. You look back at the gloomy beach and hear a terrible cry from a far that literally makes you jump. You don’t know what the cry was but you decide you must move forward as fast as possible. You head is still spinning but with all your might you ascend back up the stairs as quickly as possible until you reach a golden door with music coming from behind it. You reach for the key in your pocket and look at the door but there is no keyhole but instead a pin pad with familiar looking symbols on it. You realize this is just the first step in decoding something to do with note. You pull out the note again…

(I wasn’t trying to point out anyone or anything in particular with the story. I just noticed some things and ideas seem to be repeating so I just want to get it moving forward so there isn’t too much backtracking. I want to know what happens next as it sounds like it could be a good adventure. On with the story…)

^^ agreed
I’ll pick up a thread from an earlier post and see what I can weave.