Aardvarks and Hedgehogs

Okay. I know what you’re thinking. What the heck does “aardvark” have to do with any of the prompts I got from Seventh Sanctum? Well, nothing really. Nothing, as in the five prompts I generated did nothing for me. LOL

When I was busy generating prompts Monday night and Tuesday morning, I copied down a couple of the earlier attempts but thought I could do better and continued on. This prompt actually came from The Plot Generator. Unfortunately I didn’t write down what options I clicked on, so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, here are the plot particulars that were generated for me.

Your main character: Phil DeVito, male
An adjective to describe him or her: intelligent
Secondary character: Graham Bond, male
His or her relationship to the main character: uncle
Jobs: navigator, gardener, homemaker
An object: piano
An adjective that could describe an object: peculiar
A number between 2 and 400: 32
A location: Scotland
Three more adjectives: windy, cursed, ample
Three animals, singular: aardvark, rabbit, tortoise
Something a ghost might appear when photographed: distorted
Two body parts, plural: elbows, fingers
A type of accident: boating
An adjective that could be used to describe a place: chilly

That’s a lot to include, when you think about it, but it was also a lot of fun. Just to help you keep track, I’ll highlight the specifics I include in green.

Aardvarks and Hedgehogs

Phil DeVito had to admit, Uncle Graham had outdone himself this time. He regarded the piano through the glass of scotch he was holding, the distorted image making the aardvark shape look like it was melting.

“Why an aardvark?” he asked. “Why not a rabbit, say, or a tortoise?

Uncle Graham shifted his ample form in his chair and rested his elbows on the table. Fingers steepled, he looked at his highly intelligent 32 year old nephew and grinned.

“Amos MacIntyre was my best friend back in Scotland - Mac and Bond, that was us. He was a navigator by trade, until that terrible boating accident on the North Sea. Chilly, that.”

“What’s chilly?” Phil asked, having a bit of trouble following his uncle’s train of thought.

“The North Sea.” Graham took a sip of his drink. “Windy too.”

“But where does the aardvark fit into all this?”

“Yes, well. After the accident Amos though he was cursed so he became a gardener.” He lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Phil took a sip of his drink as he waited patiently for his uncle to answer his question.

“He moved to America. I can’t remember the name of the place…I know it was hot there, and he took up with a housewife or a homemaker or someone like that.” He shook his head. “At any rate, the place was just lousy with aardvarks and he developed a fondness for them.”

“I still don’t understand why you painted a piano to look like an aardvark,” Phil said.

“He saved my life, don’t you know.” Graham looked at him seriously. “I was on that boat that sank too. The piano is my gift to him.”

“I didn’t know you were in the navy Uncle.”

“I wasn’t.” He finished his drink. “I was a stowaway.”

Phil looked at him in astonishment.

“Maybe it wasn’t aardvarks,” Graham mused. “Maybe it was hedgehogs.”