Day 134 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Write about a character paving their own path.
Shannon: “What are you doing,” I asked my older sister as I watched her packing her things into a suitcase. “Are we going somewhere? Is it a surprise?”
She pushed her lips to the side and sat me back down on the bed. “Sorry, but this is actually just a trip for me. You should go back to bed. You’ll be tired for school tomorrow.”
“So will you,” I quickly refused.
She smiled, “Do you want to be in on a secret,” she questioned, knowing I loved to know information other people didn’t.
“Yes,” I eagerly got closer, putting my ear up in perfect listening range.
She let out laugh. “First you have to pinky promise not to tell mom and dad,” she held out her finger, “And you’re the one who told me how serious this kind of promise is, so don’t agree if it’s too hard,” she warned.
She sounded like she didn’t think I could do it, so I had to prove her wrong. “I can keep your secret,” I quickly wrapped my pinky around hers before she could take the offer back.
“I’m running away,” she quickly revealed, carefully watching me, witnessing the fear wash over my face. “It’s not that I don’t love all of you anymore. I just don’t have any freedom to live my own life. I can pretend I can ask for it, and someone could give it to me, but I feel bound by everything I’m connected to. I just want to break free. Do you understand,” she questioned, nervously.
I shook my head, “Don’t go,” I moved forward to hug her, trying to persuade her to stay the only way I knew how.
She seemed torn. “If I stay I’m living someone else’s life. It’s a fine life and I’m sure it would have great moments and I’d be with you guys. If I go I’ll finally be free to find out what I’m capable of. I can’t live with myself if I don’t find out.”
I didn’t understand a word she was saying. I only knew that I wanted her to be here in the morning, so I started crying into her stomach.
“Do you feel that,” she questioned.
“What?” I looked up at her.
“That thing that makes you cry,” she explained and I nodded. “I feel that everyday I stay hear, pretending to be happy as somebody I’m not. I want you to feel better, do you want me to feel better too,” she smiled, holding me tighter.
I nodded, reluctantly.
“Than you have to let me go.”
Erin: “Do you have your homework,” Mrs. Ray asked Ron when she got to his desk.
“No ma’am,” he answered honestly.
“Again,” she sighed. “Please see me after class.”
He did. “You wanted to talk to me.”
“You have not been doing your homework for weeks. What is up with you Ron?”
“Well, I’ve been observing my fellow classmates and have realized the effect homework has on our grades is heavily disproportional to our tests. I’m only going to be young once, and don’t see the point of wasting my time on it. I can do well on the test by just coming to class, so that is what I plan on doing.”
She was not sure what to say to him, so she just dismissed him, planning on following up at a later date, though it never came. Honestly, he wasn’t wrong and if he wanted his grade to reflect his choice that was his right.
Write about a character finding their own route.
Pelky Sisters 
I’d watched in stunned awe, mixed with more than a pinch of jealousy as my siblings had created their own stories, forging their paths through the stone and ice that had encased us in a safe space throughout our childhoods. As we grew up, the ideas truly began to take hold, leading us through the portals that popped up in the various mirrors hanging in the house; each stayed open only long enough to the keen-eyed observer to heave themselves through before freezing back to tempered glass. Our stories, our true fateful paths, were to create and live out our lives stretched thin between two worlds with completely different goals to accomplish.
At twelve, my eldest sister Mel had stumbled through the first without meaning to at all, and no one knew anything about it until years later. Suddenly, as she practiced a perfect pirouette before the massive mirrored panels in our dance room, the entire wall had wobbled and cracked as though something, or someone, were attempting to break through. When she stepped up to the glass in her soft shoes and with her pink pastel outfit warping in the reflection, she stood there eyeing it like the curious girl she was. Tapping the undulating surface she said the highly-polished wood floors came out from under her and gravity was pulling apart at the seams. She ended up splayed on the cold stone floor in the highest tower of the castle winded and bewildered as to what had happened.
In the years that followed, Mel became an accomplished swordswoman and spectacular dancer in both our realm and the unnamed one just out of our reach. Earth bestowed scholarships upon her shoulders for her fencing prowess and talents in ballet. But across the mirrored plane, she was quickly granted a knighthood, an honor given to only men in the past, and charged with drawing up plans for entertainment and world-wide dominance in combat. As the years wore on her, she stood tall and proud, handling the charges with grace and dignity.
Four years later, our eldest brother Dan, who was fourteen at the time, fell through after a loud row with our father over his sportsmanship. Upon arrival, he fell under the alluring enthral of the crown princess of the land and practically turned into a lost puppy following her around night and day. He quickly became the rival of a prince who’d been promised her hand and his competitiveness took over for months at a time. When he was finally able to win her hand, he’d become an esteemed dragon rider and jousting champion around the realm. In the real world, his skills at football, hockey and any other sport he attempted grew steadily and he did, indeed, win the love of his sweetheart, though none of us knew until we were much older what that would actually mean for Dan.
Daisy found herself on the wrong side of a mirror while playing a game of fetch with the cat when she was ten and a half, that half is still very important to her. Before her first stint, when she found out about Mel and Dan leading double lives, she was a playful child with her eye on medicine, as much as a child can, anyway. Her brain was sharp as a blade, but it was seldom tested to the extent that she would actually have to think about what she was doing; this made everyone around her see her in an ever-childish light. But once in the new realm, her mind was free to wander and entertain any, and all, ideas that could cross it. Truthfully, I think her path was altered the most by this fateful rift in reality.
By eighteen she was an accomplished scientist on earth, having spent every waking moment in the other realm creating experiments in every capacity possible while she had no one gauging danger levels. After all these years, she still takes frequent trips, when allowed through, to the land to perform otherworldly feats that no sane scientist here would dare step near.
And so, as I stand with my back to the mirror portal in the drawing room of the castle, I am at a crossroads. Over the past twenty-two years, since I was twelve, I’ve spent every moment of my existence in a strange realm. As we understand, time moves differently every time you step through a portal as though they are constantly in flux, so I don’t know what will happen if I am to go home. Truthfully, I’ve lived a good many years travelling the realm with Mel, taming dragons with Dan and aiding Daisy with her experiments, but they’ve taken long excursions back to our home world. They have lived lives in both; have forged paths with one foot in each.
I certainly paved my own path here, but I suppose now it’s my time to take a little walk in their footsteps.
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Nikki looks at the text calling a group meeting. She debates going, but she knows she needs to tell them. She sighs, then heads for the Evert house. She nods to Mikio as the mother starts upstairs. Nikki turns for the garage and heads for the basement. Everyone else is there.
“Alright, let’s get started-”
“Guys, I have to tell you something,” Nikki says.
“This is just routine, Nikki, can it wait?” Rick asks.
Nikki nods. Everyone starts to talk about how they’ve been progressing with training, and if anyone has something to report. Nikki goes last. When everyone’s done, Nikki is the center of attention. She gulps, then just says it. “I’m leaving.”
No one speaks.
“I was contacted by the Wakanda Embassy in California. Apparently, Heather told Princess Shuri about me when she was in Wakanda. Even before Heather arrived, I was contacted for a job in the Scientific and Information Exchange. I, I told them that I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I should leave, but I want to.”
Josh sighs.
“This feels like something I need to do,” Nikki continues before he can say anything, “College hasn’t felt right-”
“Nikki, Nikki,” Josh says, getting her to stop. He’s standing in front of her, “We agree.”
Nikki pauses, then looks at the others.
“We aren’t mad at you, Nikki,” Jacey says, “This sounds like a once in a lifetime chance. Take it.”
“But the team-”
“Is dwindling, yes,” Rick says, “but we haven’t been out as much since SHIELD…” Everyone’s silent for a moment. “We weren’t going to do this forever…”
Nikki nods. She looks at Finn. “You haven’t said anything.”
Finn smiles softly, “Go change the world, Kiki.”
Nikki smiles back.
“Gus and Heather would agree,” Josh adds. Nikki hugs him and everyone else joins in. “Trust your heart and find your path. This was only the beginning.”
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