The autumn air was brisk and gusty.
Fallen leaves spiraled into micro tornadoes in the wind. Enveloped in a layer
of clouds, the sky was cast in a shade of pale grey. The dreary weather
accommodated the feeling of uncertainty he felt. Forced to leave his home for
'better opportunities', his entire family left to endure months of sickening
waters alongside other traders on a small ship called the Fortune. Relief had
filled each and every person when they had finally reached land. This
sentiment, however, was ill felt due to the bittersweet terms of their arrival.
Talk of supply strain was overheard by both newcomers and previous settlers.
This of course was because, as he later found out, their journey hadn't exactly
been expected. On top of this, the land that had been promised to give new
fortune had the appearance of being bleak and barren. The rocky cliffs and
tough soil hardly seemed welcoming, at least not in his eyes.
This
knowledge put him on edge. Having the feeling of undesirability, he felt paranoid
over, possibly inexistent, eyes following his figure as he passed by. Attitudes
felt hostile towards him. The feeling of judgment never ceased to leave his
side. Their placement of blame was not incorrect, however. He understood their
rations were scarce to start of with and now the arrival of 35 newcomers would
be sure to tax everyone’s famine. Knowing it wasn’t unreasonable; he still
somehow felt their allegation was hypocritical, for he had heard the older men
in taverns talk of native savages before the first settlement. This thought
angered him, for they knew how it felt to be unwelcome. They should understand
that he was not responsible for what his community had done, or not done. He
wished they saw the similarities in their situations over their differences, as
he did.
Still, he felt the eyes follow and inhospitable
conversations lined his ambivalent days. Slowly, the trees grew bare and fallen
leaves degenerated, creating a perfect metaphor for the colony’s state of
being. As autumn faded to winter, he watched the town officials, perplexed over
the ration shortage dilemma, scramble to fathom a resolution, however desolate
the chances seemed.
HEY LAUREN!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOkay, so, I really liked that you made this a story (instead of describing something that happened in history, and leaving it like that). Also, your post was really descriptive, and really explained everything that he was feeling. The one thing I would add would be more about who the previous settlers, and the newcomers were, but overall, I thought it was really nice and creative!
I thought this was very nice and descriptive with lots of nice big words lol but I agree with the previous person and think you could've talked more about the previous settlers and also more of the narrator's background. Overall very nice :)
ReplyDeleteThis was a very creative way of responding to the prompt. It's interesting how you decided to look at the "intruder"'s point of view, and how some of them do feel bad about ruining the local atmosphere. It's also an interesting comparison if we look at "intruder with humble intentions" versus "intruder with everything-is-mine intentions". There's not a lot of other material I can respond to, lol. :P If I had to, I could nitpick some small grammatical hitches (parallelism, writing out numbers, improper placement of semicolons/commas, etc...) but your writing in general flows swiftly. Good job!
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