CPC Contest

Carol is having a contest! Team Lily!!!

The prompts I used: I used all of them! They are italicized!

     Maybe it was just one minute. Maybe a second. Or maybe one microsecond.

It just happened WAY too fast.

 I never knew my parents, really. They were killed when I was five. Before my eyes. It was so fast. Fleeting memories are all I have. Memories, a bike, and a name: Everly. My parents named me that because they said they’d love me forever. That’s what the letters say, at least. 

     My parents were rebels in the great war. They thought if they ever died, they should tell me some things. So they wrote letters. 

     The war was lost quite valiantly. Now we are under the rule of the Ambersteens. They are cruel and ruthless. Oh, and they hate my guts. 

     About everyone else here hates the Ambersteens, too, but everyone is too afraid to do anything. 

     I live by a river. Just me, my bike, and the letters. The letters that could change the world. Only I didn’t know this.

***

     I lie down under the bridge. I close my eyes. I fall asleep.

  “Everly? Everly, wake up!” a voice, distinctly masculine wakes me from my light sleep.

  “What the heck? I’m trying to sleep!” I say to the boy.

  “No, you’ve got to listen to me. They’re coming.”

  “They? Who’s they? Who are you, for that matter?” I have so many questions for this boy.

  “We don’t have time. It’s the Ambersteen. They’re coming for you!” 

  I’m instantly at alert at this name. I sit up and get my first glimpse of the boy. My first impression: he’s cute. Undeniably cute. 

  “Dang, I have a crush,” I think to myself. (Not a prompt!!) I stand up, hoping my hair is okay. I catch my reflection in thr shards of a glass bottle, thrown by one of the many drunkards who roam our street at night. My black hair is dull, but not my usual rat’s nest. Sweet.

  “Let’s go!” The cute boy says urgently. His face is cute when he’s nervous.

  “Okay!” 

     We run. He grabs my hand (I blush) and we run. He has long legs that make him really fast. I run harder, trying to make it look effortless.

     I know I shouldn’t, but I look back. Across the street stand two people. They don’t even look that old. 

  “Faster!” the boys screams, the intensity of the moment causing my heart to beat faster and faster.

      We do run. I run so hard I feel like my lungs will fall out. “Stop, I can’t go any longer,” I gasp, the words tumbling our in a dissaray. 

  “To the hill. Once we get there we can rest. There’s a forest. But you have to stay with me,” the boy gives me a concerned look. It’s adorable, but it also encourages me to run harder. 

     When we get to the forest, the boy leads me to a tree. He tells me to climb. I do. He follows. I hear the steps of my attackers approach the tree.

  “Do you even know how to do this?!” a voice asks.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried to kidnap and hold under water somebody before,” a voice, so uncertain, replies breathlessly. I stifle a gasp.

  “They’re in here. They have to be,” the first person says. Slowly, the voices fade away with the footsteps.

  “Why are they trying to kill me?” I whisper. (No prompt) 

  “Cause you’re Annie and Mark Lekmin’s kid,” he says, naming my parents, “and they want to kill every last one of us,” he says.

  “Wait, who are you? And what do you mean, us?” I ask.

  “Don’t you know, Everly? I’m Andrew, the son of your families best friend. And a rebel refugee.

PICS
  

(Above)The boy, coming to warn Everly

(Below) her bike!

(Above) The letters!!