Create a Story - Week 2

Week two of my story prompt experiment using Create a Story, a prompt book I got in the discount section of Barnes & Noble. I'm doing this primarily as an exercise to keep myself writing, and to do some writing that’s perhaps a little different than what I normally do.

For this prompt, I selected a page from the historical section (pg 9). To be fair, I'm not really selecting, like any good gamer, I role a die for the genre (there are ten), and then another which I add to the page number for the start of that genre to get a random pick from that section. As a plus, I get to use my dice!

The prompts are very brief, and for an additional challenge you can include a handful of specified words. I will be trying to include all the words recommended for each prompt, since it's meant as an exercise. Sometimes a word just won't make sense for a particular story and I may skip one here or there, but I will always try to include them

The prompts are the whole content of the book, so it's not really fair to print the prompt itself... but I encourage people to guess in the comments. 

Closing the Lid

The pharaoh was dead. What was left was ritual. Established. Though he had passed young, the child King Tutankhamun had shaped what was to happen next, restored many temples and much of the old rites. Thutmose had heard stories of that tomb. Some said there was a curse and even some of those whose work was to preserve the ka, the soul and spirit, for the afterlife had been said to suffer for their work on the boy king.

Thutmose didn’t believe that. Perhaps this time the tomb was no pyramid, but their pharaoh was destined for an immortal life—a life that required a great working that the ka recognize it and return. Every part of their work was important. A scribe had worked with the vizier on the announcement to the people. By the time it was read to the people, the work to embalm the body, to wash it and prepare it, had begun. 

He’d helped remove the organs to be dried out and placed, lungs, stomach, liver and intestines, in the prepared jars. They worked upon a pharaoh. Preservation was so imperative that the jars had been made long ago, to be ready for this.

The heart remained. The ka lived there, and so it must remain. But the body itself too had to be dried out. Thutmose had been waiting. It was hardly possible to be patient. To wrap the body was a great honor. If it was done wrong, the body might not hold together when the ka returned to it. To his hands this honor fell. For all the many days the body spent drying, Thutmose agonized over it. He’d wrapped bodies before. Many, even. But to be the hands to wrap a pharaoh? To someone in his place, those were the true riches in life. Not jewels or gold or servants locked away that the afterlife be a place of comfort. The knowledge that his hands were trusted. That his skill was trusted.

Of course he was subject to the ritual. A tool of a priest wearing a mask of Anubis. To the priests, perhaps to the pharaoh too, his job was less important than the endless stream of words and ceremony that surrounded what seemed every moment. But when the time came, and the others had finished stuffing the dried out husk that had been their pharaoh with linen to hold his shape, it was still Thutmose who held the bandages and wrapped, slowly and meticulously, inch by inch, limb by limb, layer by layer, covering the body in linen and amulets until it was so safely and meticulously wrapped that the pharaoh’s immortality would see him covered in linen forever.
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The priest in his mask never stopped speaking. Privately, Thutmose wondered how he managed that in a mask with no way to drink, but said nothing, wishing not to speak a heresy that might undo his careful work. They lifted the mummy into the coffin. It was done.

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Once again 500 words with the title. Anyone catch the more awkward instances of trying to fit in one of the words? Any guesses as to what the prompt was? Hope it was interesting at least. Onward to next week, where the category for the prompt is life experience.