I've been participating in @steemfluencer 's Creative Writing Challenge, and it's time for Task #7! This one stumped me for a little bit, but I did come up with something very near and dear to my heart.

Our task (should we choose to accept it) was:

Take a look at the objects below and write a story based on a predefined idea.

Here's a list with all predefined ideas:

Without excuses: write about someone who never gave up until he has achieved a certain goal.
Old memories: a fictional essay about someone who's sharing his most exciting story from his youth.
A Tree of Life: a non-fictional essay about life, compromises and self-awareness.
Some of the best writers and creative writing teachers point out the need to write about objects. They criticize the idea to use too many abstract ideas, and actually believe that writing about any objects is the key to explain an idea in an excellent way.

I chose the picture below, and the "Without Excuses" theme:

This first thing he noticed was darkness.

Stifling, pitch black. He wasn’t even sure that his eyes were open, so he blinked a few times. Nope, it’s dark, he thought. His hands felt something - dirt? sand! - as he lifted his hand to his face, tugging at the black cloth that was put over his head.

That’s right, he remembered, they had to do it this way. He tore off the sack from his head and groaned, rolling over as his eyes were exposed to sudden blinding light.

"Well, that was stupid.” Facing the ground, now on hands and knees, eyes clamped shut and waits for the burning and the bright orange spots to fade away. He feels the heat on his back, and the sweat already trickling down his sides. He cover his eyes with his arm, and gradually opens them to take a look at where he’s ended up.

"Ah. Yes.” He looks all around him, and only sees the bright orange and umber tones of miles of sand, contrasted against an azure, cloudless sky. “The desert,” he sighs.

"Go west, and if you are lucky, you will come to an oasis,” the old man’s voice rings in his head. ”But from there, you must follow your own path.”

"Whatever that means.” He struggles to his feet, finding the footing on the fine, loose sand quite difficult. “But which way is west?” he speaks to the desert, as if the wind will bring him the answer, but instead he is met with silence.

Wrapping the sack around his head like a turban, he looks down at the ground and sees his shadow. If I can just see it move, then I’ll know which way to go, he thinks, and sits, cross-legged back in the sand facing his shadow. He traces an outline of the shadow for reference, and then sits still, keeping his body within his tracing. It looks like the chalk outline of a homicide….which it very well could end up being, he thinks grimly, but shakes his mind clear of that thought.

"Focus on the solution, not the problem,” he tells himself aloud. Despite the slight quiver in his voice, he almost convinces himself he can make it out alright. At least it shut up the the negative voice for a time.

In a matter of a few minutes, he could see that his shadow has gotten shorter, like he’s regressing back to childhood. He looks up, squinting at the sun, hand shading his eyes, to see the location of the sun, then turns to where west is…approximately.

"Hopefully the oasis can be seen for miles away in case I’m a bit off,” he thinks. Perhaps he should have stayed in cub scouts a bit longer, but it really wasn’t his thing. Plus, he doubts they would have taught him desert survival anyways.

He stands back up and turns to what he thinks west is - it’s gotta be this way! - and with determination, sets off.

---

His steps are little more than shuffles, kicking up little clouds of sand. His shadow is no longer a child, but some grotesque, elongated monster with long, pointy knives for fingers and arms that come to its shins.

A dry wheezing escapes his lips. His saliva glands have long since given up the impossible task of providing moisture for his mouth, and each gulp of hot air feels like he’s breathing a wool blanket. I must go on. The oasis, it should be here! - but what if I heard him wrong? Or took a wrong turn?

"You never should have quit school. At least you’d have that piece of paper so you can get decent job!” says a woman’s voice. He doesn’t look around, because he’s heard this voice before. It always plays back at the worst possible times.

"Look, we care for you and we just don’t want to see you throwing your life away on some…dream you had,” pleads another voice, a man’s this time. This one hurts more, somehow. Maybe because he remembers the eyes that were attached to the voice - eyes that knew the loss of ignoring the dream, but had accepted their lot in life. Those eyes had forsaken the treasure of the dream, and instead settled for the lesser treasure of the small box set before him.

His steps slow and he stumbles, falling with his face buried in the sand. He gasps as he falls, ending up with a lungful of sand. "I’m gonna die,” he thinks, "I’m going to die from breathing sand.” His body wracks uncontrollably until every last grain of sand is expelled from his lungs. Then he just lies there, motionless. Everything is sore, and he doesn’t know if he has enough energy left to stand up again.

"It’s a simple math problem! Read it and do what it says. I don’t know why you don’t get it, even the 5th graders have got this down pat, and they learned it last week!” cries a woman’s voice - another woman. There’s no sympathy in there, no inkling of wanting what’s best for him. He know he makes her look bad because his test scores are low, and he makes more work for her. But the numbers get jumbled and each time he looks at them, they say something different.

"Who am I fooling? This was a mistake,” he croaks as he rolls onto his bad and lets his head fall to the side.

And then he see it: is that a palm frond sticking out of that dune? He chuckles to himself, wondering if this is what it’s like to hallucinate from heat exhaustion and dehydration. He put his hand up to his face, blinking a few times as he holds up 3 fingers. “Well, that looks normal.” He dares to turn back to the dune to his right, half-expecting the dune to be bare like all the others. Nope, it’s still there, and it’s…moving!

He bolts upright, eyes transfixed on the green stalk int he air as it blows in the wind. And the and brings him a smell…is that..water?? He jumps up, forgetting about his sores and woes, and sprints (as well as one can sprint in sand) to the dune with the frond. As he approaches the frond gets bigger, and he see it’s attached to more fronds…and a tree…and as he crests the dune, he beholds the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen: water! An entire pool surrounded by plants and animal life desperately clinging to its cool promises.

He half-slides, half-stumbles down the other side of the dune, catching himself from flipping head over heels on a nearby palm tree. He proceeds with a little more control, but no more grace than before, taking a headlong dunk in the pool of water, disturbing its serene reflection of the blue sky above.

His head resurfaces almost as soon as the pool returns to its former placid state, letting out a big cry of joy after taking several gulps of water. He swims around a bit, enjoying the healing effect of the water on his skin, and on his muscles not having to support his weight anymore. The feeling of being able to move so effortlessly after hours of laborious trudging in the sand is like none other he has felt.

He soon looks at the sky and notices the quickly encroaching night in the form of stars and a moon, like a dark blue blanket is being pulled across the horizon. He takes a few more gulps of water and decides it’s time to rest for the night.

Pulling himself up on the sandy beach, he notices a short tree with something that looks like purple fruit on it. Dates? Figs? Poisonous? He doesn’t care, as his body takes over and gorges itself on the plentiful small fruit. He manages to gather a few fronds from the ground to make his bed beside a tree, and falls asleep almost instantly.

---

He awakes with a start for no apparent reason. He realizes the did not move a muscle in his sleep and stretches but soon regrets it as the pain comes shooting into every fiber of his being. He drags himself to the waterside and drinks his fill, and then takes a few more of the purple things from the tree, eating a few and pocketing the rest.

As he scans the horizon, he sees that it is almost dawn. Time to move. His gaze looks around at the dunes, wondering just what direction he should go.

”But from there, you must follow your own path.”

“Ya, thanks, old man,” he says in a slightly less croaky voice than yesterday. But what is my path?” He always walked to a different beat, even as a child. It was more than just his undiagnosed dyslexia. He wasn’t the usual boy that was good at sports and got along well with others. He often had more interest in what was going on in the tree next to the baseball diamond at school than the ball coming straight at him in left field. He did excel at some things, though, like music. But no one knew except his piano teacher. He never even knew himself.

As his mind wanders, as it is wont to do, he hears a voice on the wind. But this voice…this one…,”You really do play beautifully,” says the kind, elderly voice from the entrance to the living room. She never would have stepped in and listened, always from afar. But once, just once, she said those kind words from the hallway.

He turns to where he heard the voice in his memories, to the entrance to the hallway, but instead of finding the smiling face of his grandmother, he sees a light beaming over the dune, a ray of sunshine coming from the still darkened western sky! He blinks, thinking he may have overdone the poison fruit, but the light does not move, nor does it fade.

He goes toward the light, part of him wondering if he can traverse another mile of desert, last another day like this. Perhaps it’s best to stay in the oasis. It’s a nice place after all, water and food and a place to put your head. Certainly better than going back.

But he knows this is no solution. This is not who he was created to be, so he leaves behind the oasis and its denizens, given a new hope by the light shining in the darkness.

He hears a call, “You can do it! You have to keep moving forward! To stay is to die!”

He realizes that this time, it’s not in his head or in his memories, but it is a familiar voice. As he crests the dune, the morning sun casts its rays upon his back, but he does not see it nor feel it anymore. He see the source of light, the other source: a lighthouse in the desert.

"Keep moving,” it calls to him, “You are almost there! You grew weary and I gave you rest, and now you are prepared for what I have in store for you!”

He breaks into a run to the lighthouse,now able to see its white, monolithic shape against a sea of ochre and…what? Blue?!?

He stumbles forward, breaking into laughter as the wind takes the smell of salt and the sound of seagulls to his senses.

"The ocean! It’s the ocean!!” he exclaims, arms stretched out as he runs with abandon, no longer trying to conserve energy. The ocean behind the dunes is gradually revealed behind the lighthouse, and he notices a doorway opening in the lighthouse. Only one doorway, a dark contrast to the glowing white sides - and within it, a figure. Waving, beckoning him to come, as if he’s holding open the door for him, as if he’s been expecting him all this time.

He runs toward the doorway, a constant, wide grin on his sun-darkened face.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow, upvote, and resteem. I write posts on singing, playing piano, nature, and sometimes cats.