exercise #4: an object

[olaf47]

Exercise 4: An ObjectThis is another descriptive exercise. We ask you to pick an object that is of some importance to one of your characters. (Preferably of one of the characters about whom you have already written. It will be more beneficial to you if you continue to work on a specific piece with a specific set of characters than if you bounce

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[banyangirl1832]

Key glanced at her ballet slippers in the corner of her room. The hardwood floor was covered with debris from her day, gum wrappers, Coke bottles, screwed up bits of paper. The slippers were beaten, battered. Dirty from being on too many floors, bloody from being on her exhausted feet for too long. The laces hung like limp spaghetti, drooping tiredly down onto the floor. She needed new ones, but the beaten pair fit her feet so well now, even though they were hell to dance in. The thought of breaking in another pair of stiff, snow-white slippers made her sigh, her mind just as tired as her laces. But it had to be done if she wanted to avoid another bloody big toe the next day.

She picked them up from their corner and went to toss them into the trash, but found that her fingers caught on something shiny and metallic in the fabric. She looked closer at the heel of the slipper and found that it was a golden chain, filigree thin and delicate as a wet fairy. That might explain the reason her left heel had been weeping blood every time she'd stopped pirouetting. She extracted it carefully, cutting it away from the heel until the end of the slipper resembled teddy bear stuffing. When she went to bed that night, the ruined slippers safely in the trash and another new pair sitting in her closet, the necklace winked at her collarbone through the purple t-shirt she wore, whimsy and gauzy in the pale moonlight, and the sparkle of possibilities echoed through her dreams.
Ash looked at the slippers sitting in the community trash. Key had thrown them away, but not before discovering the little gift Ash had sewn into the heel. Took her long enough, she thought, slightly scornfully, but at least it had been found. Ash fought the urge to think of what that necklace was doing now, perhaps tossed onto Key's bedside table, perhaps glistening around Key's neck, touching the skin that Ash only wished her own fingers could caress. It was a shame that Key's heels had to be cut up for her gift to be found, but love hurt, everyone knew that. It was the risk you'd take. Maybe someday soon she'd tell Key that the necklace had been from her, and maybe Key would stop being all uptight and scared, and actually come dance next to her during class, their sweat flying together as the piano ground out melodies for their ears alone. How long had she been secretly nursing a crush on Key? Maybe when she'd first seen her, with her long dirty blonde hair and sea-green eyes, performing an arabesque, wrists grazing the heavy, hot air of their studio. Her eyes had been half-closed then, as though the heat was putting her to sleep even while she was still moving. Her face had been tilted up, lips slightly pursed, as though waiting for a kiss. Sleeping Beauty couldn't have been more lovely. Maybe it had been when she had approached Ash, the dark, silent one in front of the window, touching her shoulder and asking if she wanted to get a drink after class. The setting sun shot gold and purple onto her, coloring her face like stained glass, and that night she had drank red wine with Key. Wasn't there some ancient legend that if you drank red wine with someone, that made them yours? Perhaps it had been after that, when they were talking in the early winter evening and it felt like snow, how Key's eyes had opened wide at the thought of the white stuff, like a little girl's. Ash wished for that kind of childlike innocence again, but for now she'd have to experience it from afar. Ash smiled at the slippers in the can. Soon, love, soon.

[olaf47]

I'm interested in if Key knows who did it, and why she immediately starts to wear it. And why, of all the things to do, did Ash sew a necklace in Key's shoe?

This seems like a very interesting relationship between these two.