Pets & Extending Lore

This week, participants chose a pet from a selection of images and created the character who would own this pet - how long had they owned it for? How/why did they come to own it? How do the character and the pet feel about each other?

After writing the story of their first meeting (inspired by the beginning of Arabel's Raven by Joan Aitken), participants then wrote three things about their character in the chat and then had to choose someone else's character (based on these three things) and write a scene where their own character would meet this other character.

In the story below, Aurora's character Mr Gilberry meets Eve's character Ellen...

Extending the Ellen Lore by Aurora

To people not native to Greenwich, London, the address of Number 6 Skelton Lodge might not mean much at all. In fact, it would likely mean nothing at all, and if you find yourself within that demographic then I do not blame you for it. However, to those native to the streets of Greenwich, Skelton Lodge is a name that may spark recognition. They may, if they live in the general vicinity, even know of Number 6 itself, as the flat with the orange door and musty smell and the occasional sounds of Howler Monkey Ambiance.

It is at 5:34 in the morning that the primary resident of Number 6 Skelton Lodge awakes with a shake. He stretches in place, then slowly lumbers out of bed to the balcony. As he grasps the edge of the metal bars, he gazes over the street and sighs deeply, before turning back inside and pouncing on his human’s form beneath the covers, assuming it must be a capybara. Unluckily for Gusto the cat’s hunt, Archibald Gilberry was not a capybara, nor was he a happy capybara. Though, on retrospect, the latter point seemed rather moot.

Mr. Gilberry was an odd fellow. At least, that’s how his older neighbours regarded him. If asked, no doubt Janice from 14 would say “he’s an utter crackpot”, Declan from 21 would say that “he belongs in a home”, and little Abigail from number 3 would say that he’s the most wonderful kind of strange that ever there was, and that he belonged in one of her books like the fairies and the wild things.

As far as Ellen was concerned, he was the only case study worth her time. Sure, she could work on a modern geologist like Judith Bunbury, or a cartological expert such as David Sherren, but they didn’t quite have the same kind of flair that Gilberry did. And a paper concerning the experience of British experts on all matters relating to the world was not going to write itself, no matter how hard she stared at the computer screen to the tune of Rachmaninoff’s Three Nocturnes. Not a single key pressed itself at all. She found that rather rude.

Knocking on the door at the hour of 8 was a time which she considered reasonable, despite the fact that many around her had criticised her and called her a vampire, though none had ever attempted to stave her off with a crucifix and garlic. Nevertheless, Ellen was under the impression that an explorer such as Archibald Gilberry would be hard at work throughout the early hours of the morning, just as she had been, and no doubt would appreciate her punctuality. He, however, was not quite awake yet. Gusto wrapped his tail around Archie’s leg before darting to the door, leaping to the handle and pulling it down. Ellen was rather surprised to see the door swing open with no man behind it. She may have run away if she were someone else, though ghosts did not exist, else there would be concrete and indisputable proof of them, and ghost deniers would be the conspiracy theorists – a reality that was decidedly not the case.

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Pets & Extending Lore