The great Patrick Rothfuss has issued a challenge. A challenge I could not resist. But it was not the challenge that drew me in, iron-to-lodestone. It was the challenge within the challenge. In short he said “Think like me and write like me, but don’t write like me or think like me.” So I did or didn’t, however you should choose to look at it. Enjoy:
Minute One:
The aging boy languished at the countenance staring back at him from the other side of the reflective metal plate. Lines etched his brow, as they were wont to do when one is either perplexed at the level of their boredom or laden beneath the granite weight of stress.
He rubbed his hands together briskly to regain some warmth. Looking at those hands you’d never think this man worth his current position. Kraz, as his friends called him, traced the scar at the base of his right-hand thumb, lost in the memory.
Minute Two:
Blood. It always began with blood. The moment the knife sliced across his hand he knew the depth of the danger he faced. He’d trained years for this moment, learning the motions and all the intricacies one must afford to become masterful at their craft.
He’d found through sweat and the dull ache of muscles, the true shape of things. The wood and metal in his soft fingered grip were silent reminders that he was the true danger, like bees, or the daddy-long-legs silently whispering in the corner.
Tears slowly began to mount the lowest of his eyelids, but the onion lay before him, perfectly cut to a hundred-hundred pieces. He looked toward the sink, mind racing in decision. He cleared his thoughts and blinked his eyes clear, moving the untarnished pieces of onion to safety with the dull edge of the blade. Setting the knife down, he stepped, wrenched the faucet on and rinsed his soon-to-be scar under trickling water.
Minute Three:
The crash of a door from behind shook Kraz from his reminiscence. He took up the towel beneath his hands once again, sighing the deep sigh of a man resigned to his resignation. Turning with surety and wiping dry on the apron at his waist, he faced the man approaching from the latrine.
“Mint or a towel, good sir?”
The Pen is Mightier.. 