(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)

She ran as fast as she could, faster than she knew she could, faster than she had ever run in her life, down the hill, into the forest, past the young saplings she hardly knew toward the old towering oaks she had known as a cub, the same oaks she hoped would be a haven to her own cubs, the beloved litter of four she had carried for nearly two months and for whom she had traveled so far to find food, for whom she had almost found a hearty meal until the dogs had sent her fleeing, the very dogs who had made of her a widow since the day they had torn her mate apart and their men had mounted his beautiful red tail on their wall, leaving her to raise four hungry pups on her own, pups who desperately needed her to survive this chase and make it home alive, and the thought of their innocent faces put a spring in her heels as she sprinted from the sounds of barking and hooves pounding on the cold hard earth, leaving them farther and farther behind in the evening mist, until at last she heard nothing but her own breathing and the rustling of leaves under her paws, and before she knew it, she was diving headfirst into the safety of her den and the warmth of her children’s tiny bodies huddling around her, exhausted yet relieved that they might have a chance to see the coming of another spring.

This story is based on What If? Exercise 90: “The Journey of the Long Sentence”. The exercise is to write a short short story that’s only one sentence long. The objective is to understand how we can shape our writing in a similar manner that our minds function, building a linear order for observations that often consist of many overlapping aspects. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!

Back to the story