S: Show Not Tell Crusader Challenge

**The winner of a preorder of Gae Polisner's Pull of Gravity is Julie Musil. Julie, I'll email you later today!**

Show Not Tell Crusader Challenge: In 300 words or less, write a passage (it can be an excerpt from your WIP, flash fiction, a poem, or any other writing) that shows (rather than tells) the following:


you're scared and hungry
it's dusk
you think someone is following you
and just for fun, see if you can involve all five senses
AND include these random words: shimmer, saccadic, substance, and salt.

From below, the surface of the ocean shimmered.  I knew I still had hours to wait, so I dove back down and into the depths of my cave.  Since I didn’t go to school like most of the others my age, days took too long.    I knew the job I’d been trained to do was important, more important than the whims I wished I could entertain.  Still, after about 25 minutes, I swam back out, restless.

I dove deeper, so that the length of my body almost touched the sandy bottom of the ocean as I glided across it.  Scanning it for a sign that food lurked, I swam for miles before catching the faint sweet scent of lemon.  Plunging forward, it grew stronger.  The blue tip stuck out of the sand.  I grasped it, my arm the same grainy color as the mucky substance I dug it out of.  The vine was short.  Though disappointed, I sucked at the sour plant.  The first taste of food in days, all it did was tease my tongue and stomach. 

Bubbles passed me from behind.  I flipped around.  Nothing showed to have created them.  I pushed off the ground and hurtled through the water toward home.  Twice I circled back.  Still, nobody followed.  More bubbles and the faint sound of swishing water led me to believe otherwise.  Once home, I lay on the gray ledge that surrounded my cave room and rubbed at my skin, watching it turn from deep blue to slate.  Hidden, I waited.  I’d ignored the rumbling of my hollow stomach for two days.  Now, however, it would give me away.  Slowly I turned my eyes upward.  I couldn’t see far enough to know whether or not the sun had begun to set, but enough time had passed, that I knew I needed to begin my mission.

Regardless if someone followed me or not, I pushed off the ledge and swam toward the surface.  Minutes later, I could tell that the fall sky had already begun to darken.  I emerged and crawled behind the rock, crouching for only a moment while my body transformed.  I scrubbed at the salt on my tan skin with a towel and slipped into the clothes that had been placed there for me.  Sneaking out, I glanced around, knowing my movements were so quick that to any human who tried to fix their eyes on me, I would be nothing more than a saccadic suppression.

our S book (Stieg Larsson)

 our Q book since christy forgot

click to learn more about this book

(sorry, i haven't read it!)