I’ve been working through Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist Journal. One of the prompts is to steal a title from a book you’ve never read and invent your own story. The book title I chose was The Animal Dialogues, and this is my story:
Once upon a time in a utopia from a distant galaxy, there was a kingdom of animals.
Within that kingdom, there was a metropolis that lay in the center of four different animal tribes. Citizens from the animal kingdom called this metropolis steel city. Steel City was divided into four quadrants.
Each quadrant was controlled by one of the four animal tribes.
Oceania fully submerged in water controlled the northwest, Jungle which was a fast rain forest controlled the northeast, Aero set in the sky controlled the southwest, and Paradise which was covered in sand controlled the southeast.
Tribes did not cross borders unless for business.
However, there were citizens of each tribe that inhabited sections of territory that lay close to a border. In most circumstances, the border towns weren’t close enough to justify interaction. Except for the towns of Maya and Buko.
Buko was Jungle-controlled territory, and Maya was held by Paradise.
On the border set directly between these two towns were housing structures that stood directly next to each other. These buildings were close enough that citizens from Jungle and Paradise could talk to each other.
There was a pair of older gentlemen that would have discussions daily.
Being retired they found no other way of passing time as enjoyable. Without their daily chats, both men likely would have passed away long ago. As they neared closer and closer to the inevitable they found the border between each other meaningless.
So, on a normal Wednesday evening one of the men decided to greet the other in a foreign territory.
This breach of the border would likely mean the end of both of their lives. Jungle and Paradise would pass judgment on their actions swiftly and harshly. Neither man seemed to be bothered by that fact in their final discussion.
“Barry! Is that really you?!” Pete Yelled.
“Here I am in the flesh!” Why did I think that the rainforest would be less hot?” Barry asked.
“Cause you’re an idiot! You live 20 feet away.” Pete replied.
“Well, you’ve got me there. You got any booze to celebrate our last day?” Barry asked.
“Only the best for my good pal. I’ve been waiting 30 years to open this bottle of tree sap.” Pete exclaimed.
“Well, no better time than the present, am I right?” Barry asked.
“You’re absolutely right,” Pete said.
As they spent the rest of the evening drinking and chatting they couldn’t help but think how much time they had wasted throughout their lives. Time was wasted following border rules that ceased to matter centuries earlier but were still upheld.
“If I knew the rainforest was this nice I would’ve made the trip over a long time ago,” Barry said in a sad tone.
The men continued in silence for a time.
“I wish we had more time,” Pete said. Barry nodded thinking the same.
“No one else I’d rather spend my last day with,” Barry said.
As the sun began to rise the very next morning Barry and Pete left this world in each other’s company…
My analysis after completing this short story:
I lacked a lot of structure in this story. I feel like I had something going halfway through and then just seemed to lose it. It was extremely fun to write. I need to improve a lot overall but I specifically need improvement in writing dialogue. Also, I should probably try and keep the storyline a little more simple next time.
Go check out the real animal dialogues!
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