Teresa, over at The Haunted Wordsmith has tagged me to carry on her latest Finish the Story prompt. Teresa starts it out, then tags another blogger, in this case me, to add the next part. I will tag someone else to continue the story and so on and so on.
Here is Teresa’s Part 1 of “The Future Is Down”:
For fifty generations, the people of Haven have lived in the sky. Floating without a care in the world in balloons and ships passed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Everything a person would ever need in their balloons was provided to them. The sky lord saw to that. The people were happy and the sky lord was happy. But, even in a perfect life, there is born in every generation one person who is not content. Ivan was this generation’s adventurer.
When other kids passed their day playing cards or making up stories with their family, Ivan stared below his balloon and wondered. He wondered what was below the clouds. Was it a world filled with giant monsters that could gobble him in a single bite? Or, was it a world filled with tiny fairies that fluttered around towering trees just waiting for him to come play?
The more he looked, the more he wondered. And the more he wondered, the more he dreamed. Dreamed of leaving the sky.
And that is exactly what he did on his thirteenth birthday after receiving his very own balloon.
“Goodbye,” he shouted, waving as he slowly deflated his balloon. “I love you all, but have to find out. I’ll write when I can!”
As his balloon inched its way down toward the unknown, Ivan’s heart raced with excitement. “I wonder what I’ll see first.”
Ivan didn’t have long to wait, for as soon as he was in a cloud bank, he saw…
And here is my part 2:
…a huge, noisy, metallic, cylindrical tube zoom right by him, causing his balloon to start shaking and shimmering in the strange object’s wake. “Oh sky lord,” he screamed, as he tried desperately to regain control of his balloon. “What the Haven was that?”
“That was an airplane,” a voice said. Ivan turned to see that a strange looking animal of some sort had landed on the rim of his balloon’s basket. It was covered in colorful feathers and it had long, feather-covered arms that flapped up and down in a rhythmic motion. It had small, beady eyes and a pointy, hard looking mouth. And when it spoke to Ivan, it was in more of a squawk than a voice.
“What in the sky lord’s name are you?” Ivan asked the creature. “And what was that thing you call an airplane that almost knocked my balloon out of the sky?”
“I’ve heard of beings like you who live in balloons far above the clouds,” squawked the feathered creature, “but I thought it was just an ancient myth.”
“I’m as real as you are, whatever it is that you are,” Ivan said.
“I am Hawkeye,” the creature said, “and I am what the surface beings call a bird.”
“The surface beings?” Ivan said. “Tell me more, Hawkeye.”
And now I am tagging Li over at Tao-Talk to pick up and run with Part 3.
David was happy with the progress he was making on the homemade globe for his science class project. He’d applied a layer of papier-mâché all over a round balloon to give it shape. Once dry, he used a layer of chicken wire to provide structural integrity before applying the next layer of papier-mâché.
“Why are you crying, sweetheart,” Anita’s grandfather asked her.