Brainstorming Writing Piece

I'm contemplating a new setting to explore once I'm finished with Myrathra and the stories I want to tell there, and thinking about some of the current trends of fairy tales, canon and the identities of stories themselves...

So with that preamble, lemme share something I've been working on!

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"When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires

Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream

No request is too extreme

When you wish upon a star

As dreamers do"

——*——

It was a quiet evening in Bookfield, Massachusetts for Jim as he watched a game of cricket on his old television set. The box had taken a good beating over 20 years with radio towers, powerlines and all new manner of new-fangled gizmos popping up. Between the hoodlums winding down the street at all odd hours with their roaring engines, or kids that wouldn't stay off his lawn with their games, it seemed everyone had lost their sense of conscience.

"What I wouldn't give for them to have some common sense and good old morals put back into 'em..." he mused as he saw a cricket player curse and throw his bat at the other team's wicket in frustration. The orange streetlights outside his window seemed dull tonight, one of them flickering due to some moth flitting about the bulb. But then there was a blue light peeking through the curtains that got brighter. It shone just so that it twinkled in Jim's old tired eyes, and he grumbled to get up and shout at whomever had their highbeams on.

When he got to the window and pushed back the blinds, it wasn't a truck or some overlit venue...it was a star.

"Shall your wish be granted, Cricket?"

——**——

"A dream is a wish your heart makes

When you're fast asleep

In dreams you will lose your heartaches

Whatever you wish for you keep

Have faith in your dreams and someday

Your rainbow will come smiling through

No matter how your heart is grieving

If you keep on believing

The dreams that you wish

Will come true"

——**——

Cindy would have loved to spend her Friday night doing anything else. Homework, calling Mark from Science about that diner date, even just staying home to practice her tap-dancing...but no, instead she had work.

The sound of glass points clicked along the rooftops behind a set of heavier footfalls; six-legged, with a more rapid skittering and springing about between the rubbing of chords like a deep cello. When a glass heel slammed into an insectoid carapace, it was with a graceful pirouette that Cindy landed on a chimney - backlit by the moonlight that came out from behind the clouds. She glanced to a watch on her wrist and clicked her tongue disappointedly "12:06...only downhill from here."

The petitioner of tonight was grumbling in what used to be human vocal chords, clicking with mandibles as if to say "no respect these days..." while smoothing back antennae where a thinning hairline would have been. A giant cricket, wielding some broken piece of a telephone line like a bat as it struggled to get to its feet. The carapace had caved in at the point where Cindy had kicked it, leaking some iridescent sparkling fluid that turned to dust and blew away when it hit the ground.

Jim would have tried to hyperventilate if he could, each automatic motion of his chest threatening to burst between the new insect plating. The hydraulics of his arms and legs creaked and sung with dissonant tunes, like the warm-up of a strings orchestra. He was going to die without his wish ever coming true.

Cindy gave little quarter as she leapt into the air and directed her crystalline legs toward their target. Her puffy blue dress sparkled like glass and moved up to her arms and masked face, much like a masquerade ball ensemble.

"By the light of the Wishing Star, I vow you shall be crushed this night!"

———***———

Cindy grimaced at her legs and flicked off the viscera on her slippers. She hated when the monsters were messy. Looking at the time she groaned and stretched. Well, at least it was Saturday and she could sleep in before her shift at the diner.

The blue glow of starlight slipped down between the moon and the shadowy cracks of the clouds - over every puddle and under every lamplight before resting upon the roof beside Cindy.

"Wow, you really did a number on it! Do you think there'll be enough Dreamstuff left?"

She glanced down to the squeaky voice that inquired about the glowing substance that the Cricket bled. The Wishing Star was...unsettlingly cute when it showed up to assess a Fable's work. Glowing blue fur and black almond-shaped eyes with four large ears on its head and a plume of fur running down its back. Tails like a comet faded into the night atmosphere, extending up somewhere unseen into the sky. Its small-snouted mouth never moved as it spoke, only tilting its head in question before looking at the Dreamstuff expectantly.

She always hated this part the most, kneeling down and opening her mouth. She breathed in and could taste the stardust flow into her body, and the taste...

It started sweet and vibrant, fizzing down her throat and leaving an ashy bitterness on her tongue and an ache in her chest. Images flashed across her eyes of a kindly old man looking to a cleanly kept street, with shining cars parked in every driveway and every family smiling with white picket fences.

Cindy shuddered and suppressed a gag, wiping at her mouth with her sleeve.

"Well good on you! Looks like your wish is well on its way now. Shouldn't be long now before it comes true..."