Camilla

Will wonders never cease – I got this post up on time.

It’s really hard to focus these days – on anything, not just writing. I’m plugging away, putting in time, but it all feels off.

I made the mistake of bringing my lap top out of the office one night, and I used it in the living room for the next couple of days. It was kind of frightening how easy it was to slide back into my old habit of mindless gaming.

It took a couple of days but I finally clued in to what I was doing. It wasn’t exactly an epiphany, more like a wakeup call. It occurred to me that once the isolation orders are lifted, the daughter will be going back to work in her office and we’ll be looking after the granddaughter during the day, unless the powers that be finish out the school year, which is highly unlikely.

I don’t want to look back on this time and think about all the time I wasted. So I thought I’d get a jump on my prompt story and pulled out my notebook to write in long hand. Once I started it came fairly quickly, but when I was trying to figure out how to wrap it up I got all kinds of ideas to expand it into a really cool, urban mythology story.

I haven’t finished that one yet, so the story you’re getting below is the original. But it got at least one of my wheels back on track again. I wrote the prompt story one day and worked on Wandering Wizards another day. Yesterday I threw myself a pity party and didn’t do much of anything except wallow. I guess every day can’t be a winner.

But it’s a start.

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People called her Camilla – not that that’s her name. She appeared without fanfare, wandering the streets pulling a small battered wagon (that might once have been red) behind her, picking through the trash left on the curb

Treasures, she called them, the bits and pieces she found. Some of the treasure found its way to the junk store or pawn shop, the rest was added to her own vast collection. No one knew where she came from. Within a few weeks it was as though she’d always been wandering the streets with her wagon.

The old men who sat gossiping on the steps of the brownstone claimed she was a lost heiress. One day she took a wander on the wrong side of the tracks and was mugged, lost her memory from the trauma. There’s a big reward waiting, if only they could figure out who her family was.

The hookers on the corner said she was a former exotic dancer. She had that look about her. When the titty bar she worked in shut down she had nowhere to go – thought herself too good for their line of work.

The social workers who made periodic forays into the neighborhood figured she was just another lost soul, down on her luck. Maybe she had mental issues and could no longer afford her meds, or maybe she’d escaped from an abusive relationship. It didn’t really matter. To them she was just another statistic.

There was no point in asking her, Camilla wouldn’t answer questions. In fact, she never spoke at all. No one knew whether she couldn’t or just wouldn’t – it was cause for more speculation.

She lived in a squat in one of the abandoned warehouses down by the river. A couple of kids who had nothing better to do than spy on her, said she made a nest with her treasures, like a dragon with its hoard.

She was a familiar enough figure around the neighborhood that it only took a couple of days before people noticed she was missing. Still, it was another couple of days before anyone checked her squat. It was empty – no Camilla, no hoard. She vanished as mysteriously as she’d appeared, as though she’d never been there at all.

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Wordage Report

Wandering Wizards – ? words
Oops, I didn’t keep track. Howard’s up to his neck in hot water, and the rest of the gang has just realized he’s missing. It’s moving forward!

Weekly Prompt – 375 words
This story started out well, but as you can see I had a hard time figuring out how to end it. The expanded version will have a much cooler ending.

New Prompt
Use this as your first line:
The cloud was talking, and you know what that means.

Happy Writing!