Teacup story – a story short enough to fit into a teacup.
Without – Nate had to describe just one word if he was to succeed. (Genre – General, Rating – PG)
What does it mean to be without something? Nate wrote. His words were barely visible in the candle light, the ink splotches from his hands marked the pages as he continued to scribble.
To be without something means you must have held that same thing at some point. Some claim to be without friends, but they cannot know what the concept of a ‘friend’ is unless they have called another by that name. Others claim to be without luck, but to know what luck is, what luck feels like, they must have experienced it before.
That is the strange nature of words, they are meaningless without a background understanding. When a child asks what a word means, they are asking for context, for an explanation as to why that word implies a certain statement and not others.
‘Without’, therefore, is one of those words I can use to demonstrate this concept. To convey meaning with it, the reader must have lost something they valued. They must understand the value of that loss, to have been hurt by that loss and then walked onwards anyway.
‘Without’ Nate’s hand scribed faster, is not a word I wish to use often, because it is too wide and too vast to convey exactly what I wish it to convey. And yet I admire it, I appreciate that it is a powerful word.
Nate paused for a mere moment, pen dancing lightly across the parchment. He had to have this description for Tawi the following morning if he was to be included in the Writer’s Guild. Then he would have access to the writings of some of the most influential minds in the Kingdom, and the opportunity to add his own thoughts to those collections.
Without it, he would be nothing. He would continue to be nothing.
A smile crossed Nate’s face, as he realised what words he wished to close his piece with:
It captures that very essence of what it means to have something in one’s life, he scribbled, because it tells the reader what it means to be without that same thing.
Alex.J.Cobalt 