Of Heaven and Lost Memories

Gah, I am so very late again! My sincerest apologies! Distractions are everywhere, in so many forms. One of them will - hopefully - be posted here later today. ;-)
First, though, is the seventh prompt:

"in heaven we've always considered this to be a slight exaggeration"

Can you see the problems I had with this?
I mean, heaven. It's such a specific term! Is there any way that "we in heaven" could be other creatures than angels? I tried to work around that, since angels don't really fit my concept, but in the end I gave in and created Arthur inside the dream world.
My next problem was the exaggeration. What could it be? Well, once I had come to terms with the angel and real heaven thing, it wasn't so difficult. Himalaya was already part of the story and could easily be used as stairway to heaven...
Then I was stuck, though. I had promised that all the 24 Flashes would be independent, but thinking of heaven and angels and Himalaya, I couldn't help thinking of Five and the poor, confused Brian. It also seemed that Five was harder to understand than I thought, which made a sequel all the more appealing. So there you have it, I hope you don't mind.
Is it clearer now?

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A Trip to the Future

"it's a very unusual way of travelling"

Another prompt referencing the time travel in The Christmas Mystery. Honestly, I think these are the worst! It took me hours and lots of really stupid ideas until I came up with a - very imperfect - idea of an unusual way of travelling: through a kind of surveillance picture/portal in the guard's cave. If you don't like it, believe me, it could have been a lot worse.

So, who do you think those two are? I think it's pretty obvious, but then, I currently live with these characters in my head and know them better than you do (or at least I hope so).

By the way, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

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Love is...

Sorry for the long break! With the holidays almost upon us it gets a bit harder to focus. Plus, telling the story from inside Lucy's mind was hard and prompt number three was a difficult one.

"like running before the wind - or like hurtling down a moving staircase"

What do you think this could be?
The obvious, when you know The Christmas Mystery, is of course their way of travelling from Norway to Bethlehem while going backwards in time. But my blog shouldn't be this close to the book...

In the end I went for love. Love can be a lot of things, and love at first sight can happen so quickly, right?

So now you've met Dan and Lucy! What's your first impression?

Yes, I know, Lucy seems a bit... well, let's say disagreeable. But you have to understand, she had a really bad day at work, not enough sleep for over a week... And her highlight of the day was meant to be a date with Brian, who always makes her forget the woes of the real world. But he didn't show up! You can't blame her for being so aggressive, can you?
Dan, by the way, is a colleague of Anne, who also works at the Café. Just in case you wanted a stronger connection to the characters you already know...

Now, about those last two sentences I ended the story with... The second one wasn't planned, it just happened that, when I wrote "matter of Brian", my brain went straight to a large pink balloon going gloop, gloop. Blame Terry Pratchett.

The most important question:
Do you really think that excerpts from Harry Potter in English would make this story easier to read than the Italian ones? Won't thy get mixed up with the ongoing story too much?

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Childhood Mysteries

The second prompt was one of those I was really looking forward to. Especially the German version always had a mysterious and alluring effect on me, while the English sounds a bit boring:

"I know of a short cut, and that's the path we're taking now."

This is -  and always has been - a sentence whispered by a stranger, taking a girl by the hand and taking her somewhere. Good or bad? That was hard to decide.

In the end I chose a childhood experience for Anne, not meant to harm her, but with quite a damaging effect. Brian wanted to do her a favour, of that I am quite sure. Not entirely sure, mind you, but quite.

You see, Brian is a mystery to me - he was created as one. The weird kid, the willing outsider, the red head who always has dirt stuck under his fingernails and smeared over his face... Honestly, I can't tell you much about him, while I could tell you just about anything about Anne you'd possibly want to know.

I'm looking forward to get to know Brian a bit over the next few weeks. :-)

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