Describe an Imaginary Place

[The Ace]

A light breeze carried the scent of pine to my nostrils as I felt the lush grass between my toes. I looked out across the small beach to the loch and the mountains beyond. Was that really a hump breaking the surface ?

(Sorry, couldn't resist it.)

 

[Talysia]

Good one, Ace!

Water dripped from somewhere, dropping loudly into a little puddle at the foot of a wall that was slick with moisture. Bleak, grey stone arched upwards, and the shadows cast by the pitiful camp fire danced mournfully on the almost vaulted ceiling of the cave. He huddled there, shivering as icy wind blew in from the entrance, wishing that there was some better shelter in this snowstorm.

 

[StewHotston]

The walls were crumbling, aged paint flaking away like leaves after the first frost of autumn. Standing on the street the broken windows emptily returned his gaze. This wasn't the place he had hoped for.
A sparrow emerged from inside, coming to perch on a glass littered sill, and chirruped its gentle greeting. A flower peeked sneekily over the edge of the guttering, a burst of white and blue against the morbid slate grey around it. That life was enough to encourage him to look inside.

 

[Peter Graham]

A light breeze carried the scent of pine air freshener to my nostrils as I felt the lush carpet between my toes. I looked over across the small mat to the toilet bowl and the cistern beyond. Was that really a dump breaking the surface?

(Doubly sorry, Ace - I couldn't resist either).

Regards,

Peter

 

[Talysia]

I like that one, Stew

Frost covered the grass, and his boots crunched down as he walked towards the village pond. Ducks huddled on the bank, feathers fluffed up against the cold, but there was no other sign of life. Presumably all of the fish must be hiding in the deeper waters, away from the shallow edges where there was a covering of ice, barely thick enough to hold the weight of a cat. He sat down and put down his rod and tackle box, and then steam curled up as he opened a flask of tea, and he relaxed.

Edit: Good one, Peter

 

[Peter Graham]

The hive had been empty a long time. The deal of the brood box had weathered to a silver-grey, but the grain of the wood was splitting for want of a coat of creosote. A cats cradle of spiders web, heavy with the morning dew, lay thick on the exposed top board, shimmering in the first rays of the spring sun.

The trees moved in the wind, causing a single piece of damson blossom to flutter down onto the hive where it rested atop the web, bobbing in the breeze like a ship at anchor.

Peter

Edit: Thanks, Talysia. Just thought I should try a serious one too!

 

[Talysia]

The pale moon rose over the desert, and the pale light that reflected back from the almost jewellike sands was very nearly iridescent in its brilliance. Only the wise travelled at night in the desert, which was ultimately preferable to the unbearable, pressing heat of the day, but in turn night was close to freezing. The winds blew tiny gemstone motes of jewelsand up into this eyes, and he quickly brushed them away, pressing on with his journey.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

(Very, very impressed by the imagination and imagery of everything everyone is posting here, but, um, per the first page, could we try and keep it to one or two paragraphs?)

Beautiful, Talysia!

I don't normally (or, well, ever) do Science Fiction, and the science here is undoubtedly shaky, but this came into my head and the only way to exorcise it was to write it down.

Domed cities spread swiftly, like blisters on the face of the land. As the upper layers of atmosphere were stripped away, the earth’s surface grew feverish under the fierce bombardment of solar energies. Oceans began to evaporate; the resulting cloud-cover only served to hold in the heat. A white rim of salt flats formed around each of the continents. Drenched in radiation, men mutated inside their hot-house cities: growing extra eyes, extra limbs; some even put forth leaves and twigs or branching porous growths like corals. In time, the domes became like nightmare gardens.

 

[Talysia]

Agh, I just noticed a couple of typos and repetitions in my last post. I'll have to start checking more closely. I like the sci-fi one, Teresa. It's not my genre, but I'll give it a go myself.

It was called the Planet of Storms for good reason. Giant tornadoes of pure gas spun in place from just about everywhere there was land, and the sky they reached into was equally turbulent, black and thick with roiling clouds. Where there was no land, there were lakes of what the scanners had revealed to be acid, and the whole scene seemed to have been painted in various shades of murky grey or black. From the safety of the ship, she wondered why they had to go there at all.

 

[Commonmind]

The old seamstress’s room sat cold and quiet. The Merklen rocker in that dark corner she loved receding to after busy evenings had forever ceased its assault on the cherry-stained floorboards. Whispers of band tunes no longer sang from the phonograph atop its Chippendale perch. The teak and leather coach flanking the fireplace would enjoy their tangerine baths no longer, and the unfinished quilts once keeping their arms warm during cool nights had found new homes in the missing pine chests that used to foot the seamstress’s canopy bed. The breakfast table had already relocated, and the mustache tapestry once curtaining the single window had been thrown over the spot where she’d once served guests with silver platters of tea and scones. Bookshelves misplaced their occupants, gold trimmed mirrors loathed making canvas reflections under darkness, the cramped closet cried in its emptiness and the grape sheets that had once warmed the seamstress’s old bones were saddened, for they could warm them no longer. Only the oak door rejoiced, for no more did it have to bend its tired hinges.

 

[Talysia]

No-one had ever escaped the Gates of Hell before, but he took one last look at them before he left. They were tall, wrought out of iron that was black with blood, and there were spikes along the top. Upon each spike was a humanoid-looking skull, its' empty-socketed gaze staring uncaringly back and cracks in the top showed the force with which they had been put there. The gateposts were equally black, only atop them were cages which contained skeletons that had only partially been picked clean by the birds, and the air was filled with the stench of brimstone and decay. There was also the faint sound of angry roaring.
He turned and ran, not looking back again.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The palace was a rambling butter-colored structure of few corridors and many inter-connected rooms, great and small. Each room had a locked door, and was guarded by some minor official dressed in yellow silk, wearing a tall, pagoda-shaped hat. There was, so far as she had discovered during her weeks of living there, no straight path all the way through. Any attempt to progress from one end to the other was largely a matter of knocking on one brightly painted door after another, and begging admittance of the person in charge. Many of these made bizarre (but generally harmless) demands and conditions. Sometimes they were merely hospitable and invited her to stay for tea, which they served out in tiny porcelein cups shaped like seashells, under the “shade” of an artificial palm, or seated on enormous piles of soft, multi-colored cushions. She had never yet dared to refuse these invitations, for fear some obscure ritual might be involved, and that failure to participate would count against her later. Sometimes the rooms were dead-ends, with no door in the opposite wall, and she had to retrace her steps until she came back to one of the larger chambers with many ways in and out. It was all very time-consuming.

 

[Sephiroth]

I can't believe how many responses there have been already! Another great thread!

So we've put our swords away? Adjectives and adverbs can come out to play?



Parting the last curtain of consciousness, her mind shed its earthly shackle, cascading over into the ethereal realm. She was a silver waterfall plunging unknown depths of gold! There was only a bright, piercing aura of light, an isotropic panorama in three dimensions...the mind's eye took seconds (or what passed for seconds) to adjust; to see.
But what a sight the haze of lustre hid! Hanging in the burnished aether like a luminescent jewel, the Garden of Eternity, there in all its green-hued glory...flush with the very essence of Life! Snaking through its centre, the pulsating River of Souls glowed its own distinctive, viridescent hue, almost painful to look at, but impossible not to. As her mind drew closer, the verdant blanket of the Eternal Forest resolved into individual Trees of Life, and the fruits of the forest were blazing suns! Starlight tinged green as it bounced from leaf to leaf, suffusing the underboughs with limpid lumen. And in this unearthly garden, amidst the silver-blue, fungus-ridden roots of the old Great Trees, there walked the Gardeners.

 

[Talysia]

Dark and gloomy in eternal twilight, the monolith stood for all to see, ravaged by both time, the elements, and the degradations of humanity. The land it stood on bore many scars; deep rifts that hadn't healed from when the rocks had been torn asunder, and no grass grew there - in fact, there was no life within five miles of the enormous monument. Even the names of the people who had died in the war - scratched into the side of the stone with crudely chiselled letters - were fading away, and anyone unucky enough to have to travel through the region swore that they saw a legion of ghosts huddled around what might be their own memorial.

 

[HardScienceFan]

Light barely penetrated throught he gloom caused by the noxious fumes.

The fulgurous light of the lanterns made everything look alien,offcolour,bent out of shape.

A few cars were parked haphazardly,like thrown way toys.
Garbage was everywhere,even though it was a well- to- do neighbourhood.


That's my description of where i live,BTW.

It's not fictional

 

[Tillane]

Tillane sat on the heat-scorched ground and watched the Psun slowly fade from the sky. He'd wandered into the wrong room again; following the emu, he had walked through the field separating reality from t'other world into a whole new plane of cunfuzzlement. He watched the sky rotate through a hundred degrees, then fell on his side, cursing at the blue-grey disc of the Psun.

 

[Sephiroth]

The steps were only visible in places. Here and there, fragments of bright limestone caught pallid shafts of moonlight as they shone through holes in the canopy. Nearby, even in the shade, steps stood out pale against the tangled undergrowth. Further ahead and all around, the forest was black, silent; watchful. Thickets of rose and bramble, ivy and catbrier intermingled to form an impenetrable, prickly layer that slowed progress to a painstaking crawl. The smell of the place was thick, damp and woody. It was hard to tell if there was something rotten underneath, or if it was just the imagination; perhaps there was an animal carcass nearby. All around, the musty air was still and heavy; almost sleepy, it seemed to catch in your mouth, so that you had physically to swallow it. The feeling was almost claustrophobic. Quite claustrophobic, really. An atmosphere of unease crept over the party that day. Secretly, many of them wanted to go home long before they reached the ruined temple.

 

[Saltheart]

Blood dripped from the ceiling, and the walls arched back and forth, back and like a pulsating membrane. He staggered forward through the fog, the dank yellow fog the seeped in from the ceiling, stinging him, blinding him. There was nothing but yellow, the pale, horrible yellow that surrounded. He squeezed his palms against his ears, trying to drown out the eerie screams and cries that filled the room as he groped blindly through the madness.

 

[Talysia]

As usual in the city, a deep smog had settled over the rooftops and quickly descended to street level, covering everything in a blanket that made visibility a distant dream. You couldn't really tell that it was night - the sky was still the same dirty grey it had been earlier in the afternoon - and all but the tallest buildings poked through to the cleaner air above the smog. Dispirited people trudged wearily back to their homes below, struggling to see and worried that they would be robbed. The city was as dark in spirit as it was in reality.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It must once have been a region of colossal statues, for she saw their shattered limbs -- broken but still recognizable -- practically everywhere she went: half-buried in the earth, scattered along the riverbanks, rising up out of tilled fields north of the city, where farmers were taking back the land. Sometimes, the smaller parts, like fingers and toes, had been incorporated into masonry. On the Grand Promenade, a foot with a high instep formed an arch leading into the Plaza. In one of the city’s parks, a cupped hand formed the basin of a fountain. At the edge of the slums, a family of vagrants had set up a tent in the lea of the wind, inside the crook of a gigantic arm. Only the statues’ heads were entirely missing. Had they, she wondered, been reduced to rubble by the ancestors of the current inhabitants, or perhaps been rolled, with infinite effort, into the river, there to sink down into the mud? It gave her an eerie feeling to imagine their water-worn faces gazing up at her through the murk. Had they been kings, gods, or heroes? How had they fallen into such disrepute that their monuments were treated in this cavalier fashion?