I really enjoy writing. Writing stories, poetry and in general, writing creatively. So, this session was an enjoyable one for me. I learned about Ray Bradbury (1920 – 2012) who wrote across a range of genres but was an author often associated with anthologies despite this. An anthology is a collection of short stories that sometimes differ from one another completely, but are often linked through an overarching narrative, genre, or style.  Our first task was to simply write without stopping, about whatever object was given to us for a minute per object. I liked that this challenged me and kept me writing even when I wanted to stop, correct, and ponder. The meaning behind this task was to prove that we are more honest when we do not delay in order to think, and this was shown by the interpretations that were behind each object’s descriptions which were relative to a certain part of life. I actually found some of my descriptions to be very true, which was definitely a surprise, considering that I had no idea what each object signified.

 

With this in mind, we moved on to the final task. Using an online emoji generator, we were to write a short story, around 500 words long, based on five generated emojis. I found it a little frustrating that the generator kept giving me bizarre and odd-looking little icons, but I knew that this would push me to think creatively, and understanding that this was the topic of the lesson, I went ahead with my strange collection of tiny images and tried to think of an interesting story with them as my inspiration. I’m not a huge fan of the end result, but I like the fact that I actually succeeded in forming some sort of storyline, especially since I had doubted that a good idea based on pineapples and weapons was even possible. I couldn’t, sadly, use all of the emojis. One of them was impossibly difficult to include (bottom left) and in the end, I settled for drawing inspiration from its colour, since I could not add it in otherwise.

 

He looks up begrudgingly, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Really? A tree.” He glances over at me in bewilderment, pointing at the humongous tree that stood in front of us. I admit that it was a rather strange target for practice, but there was something so utterly unpredictable about it, which was perfect for what I had planned. It’s probably the bizarre location, I thought with amusement, this would throw me off as well. We were standing in what appeared to be a desert, golden sands dancing about in the wind, revealing slabs of black rock before covering them again in the next few seconds, the inky darkness sudden and bold amidst the sunlit terrain, surfacing with a jolt and vanishing just as quick, like the shadows of sharks. No grass could be seen, no animals, no life, nothing except this tree and us, three solitary figures, standing in the middle of nowhere. “Yes”, I tell my student, “A tree. Would you care to point out anything else apart from the obvious? No complaints. Begin.” After huffing in frustration, he stepped forward, the sands shifting under his heavy footfalls, teasing the eyes as if they were about to swallow him up. As he walked toward it, the sword in his sheath clanked against his armor, disturbing the quiet whistle of the wind which was pretending to be silence. My eyes jumped ahead to examine the tree and see if I could spot any changes. Like before, the bark was a deep, sullen brown, with swirls and patterns engraved along the surface and clothing the branches on top, were the very same leaves, glinting in the sunlight with a brazen reflectiveness, still an everlasting emerald green, the colour of life – the kind of hue that grows around you, guiding you along your path with a comforting familiarity. However, the most important thing was what grew amongst the sparkling emeralds, about a dozen honey-yellow pineapples. I knew that this was what had confused Hephaestus, a tree of all things, but with pineapples on top as well. He always came prepared to our training sessions to face deadly monsters and battle the world with his sword and bow. I recognized this as both his strength and his weakness; my student was overly-eager and overly-confident and whilst he was strong, he still had so much to learn, including the fact that there will always be something he wouldn’t expect – something that he won’t have prepared for. It was my job to prepare him, and if that meant taking him to the ends of the world to complete the most ludicrous and preternatural tasks, so be it.

By now Hephaestus was in direct shooting range of a, particularly plump looking pineapple. He usually had to slay the beast or retrieve something. Whilst this is not always the case, I let him believe he was guessing right in the aim being to bring me one of the fruit. After all, to him, this was simply one massive plant, where could the challenge possibly be? Alas, his arrow was fast and true, and as the sound of it slicing through the air reverberated throughout the vast sandy dunes, time seemed to slow, and I could almost catch his mockingly self-assured smirk before it was wiped clean off by undeniable shock. Sure enough, the arrow had missed – but not because the aim was off. It was rather largely the fault of the target, which had unmistakably moved aside. “The pineapple dodged – wha –“ he didn’t have the time to finish his sentence because to both of our surprise, all of the pineapples that were previously on the tree had proceeded to fly off in pursuit of their attacker. And because there was almost no time to react, I was now watching my student run frantically in every direction possible, trying to escape the staggering formation of angry fruit that was hot on his tail, looking far deadlier than I remembered them from my last visit. Let’s see those instincts you speak so highly of now H, I smile, getting ready for one of my best lessons yet.