Day 276 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Write about a character softening.
Shannon: “Leave her,” I heard his friend shout before running off. I expected him to listen, but I watched him struggle to decide. He looked back at me for a few seconds before bolting forward. I thought that was odd, but when I saw him turn around I was even more surprise.
He knelt down to my level. “Let’s go,” he pushed forward his shoulder. I was reluctant to take his help. He wasn’t a kind person, so I didn’t know if I could trust him.
“Why are you helping me?” I tried to read his eyes.
“No time to explain,” he put a hand under my legs and the other on my back as he started lifting. I quickly wrapped my hands around his neck.
Erin: At some point I decided to just stop pretending. I wasn’t what society had labeled as manly. There were some movies that were so cute they could make my eyes water. When people hurt my feelings it did hurt, it didn’t bead off of me like spills in advertisements for a waterproof shirt. I was good at hiding truths like that, but I just didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the movies I liked, listen to the music I liked and be the person I deep down was.
Show us the softer side.
Pelky Sisters 
(Yeah… might have altered the prompt a little to ‘something that softens’. Oh well.)
Nikki walks into the Evert basement, finding Rick at the computers and the brothers in the dojo room. She looks over Rick’s shoulder as he stares at a few pictures with an empty glare.
“Where’s that?”
Rick jumps a little, then realizes Nikki is right behind him. “Apoth-caeri’s lair.”
“Not so secret for us,” Josh states, right before August flips and pins him.
“Don’t get distracted.”
“Who says I’m distracted?” Josh kicks August’s foot and then pins him. August wrestles to free his arms, but then taps out with his face squished to the mat.
“How did you get the pictures?” Nikki asks.
“The first time we were there, Finn got these pictures,” Rick states, clicking to bring up some blurry pictures of a trashed lab.
“For an artist, they’re-”
“He was under pressure,” Josh states, “and that’s not his area of expertise.”
“We go these later, when Jacey was sent on a recon mission with August.”
“Which actually worked,” August comments, mostly to himself.
“But I have no clue what he’s working on. They couldn’t get pictures of his notes, except this one.” Rick brings up the right pictures. When he sees Nikki looking over the pictures with interest, he offers her the chair. Josh suggests he get something to eat. Rick starts for the storage room, but then Josh takes his shoulder and all but throws him at the stairs.
When he comes back down, Nikki is scribbling in a notebook.
“You can make heads and tails of that?” Rick asks.
“Kinda. More notes would help,” Nikki says, “but this is chemistry.”
He looks at her notes, seeing element squares. He sees the notes they captured, as well as close ups on different items in the pictures.
“Okay, well… let me know when you have an idea.”
***
Rick gets a call in the middle of the night. “Yes?” He asks, still half in his dream.
“A deliquescent or mollifying component!” Nikki yells in both excitement and horror.
Rick stares ahead of him. “Umm… what?”
Nikki sighs, “Apoth-caeri’s project-”
Rick groans, “Nikki, when I said let me know, I meant-”
“He’s going to make a component that can soften or dissolve any material it comes in contact with.”
A bucket of ice water was nothing compared to that sentence. “…What?”
“Yeah, that’s-”
“Bad.”
“We need to tell August and Josh. …I don’t have their numbers.”
Rick sighs, “Yeah, as bad as this is, how about we wait until the morning before telling them.”
“…Well, Apoth-caeri isn’t finished yet, as of when the pictures were taken. I’ll let you get more sleep.”
“Thank you,” Rick sighs. He’s laying down before his finger fully presses on the hang up button. And he’s wishing he could actually fall asleep before his phone hits a pillow on the floor.
LikeLike