Found
Chapter Seven, Fin.
The following story and illustration were inspired by the 2023 Folktale Week Prompts. At the time, I only got as far as writing a rough version of the story below and doing a couple of thumbnail sketches before other paid projects came up. After rediscovering the story in a drawer under a mountain of paper, I wanted to resurrect it and see what could be made out of this little exercise. This is 7of 7! I hope you have enjoyed reading this little story exercise!
Find Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. (Time lapse below!)
Chapter 7: Found
Micha stretched, his body contorting in ways that made Felix feel terribly ill. Felix worried for a moment that they had made the potion incorrectly, for Micha seemed to be in terrible pain, but he made no sound.
Finally, he was still. He was a boy again, but terribly, horribly still.
Felix reached out a shaking hand to touch him.
“Micha?”
“Micha?”
Micha slowly, miraculously, opened his eyes.
“Micha!” Felix cried.
“Felix!” Micha croaked in a weak little voice.
Felix snatched up his brother and hugged him. They both lay giggling and crying until they heard a noise at the entrance of the room. They froze.
Had the foxes returned?
Felix leapt to his feet and reached for the torch.
A strange snuffling noise followed between each footstep. Felix could hardly hear it for the pounding of his heart. Just when he thought he might faint from terror, he heard a familiar baying.
“HAMISH!?” Micha and Felix yelled together.
The great, leggy dog bounded forward at the sound of their voice and leapt, licking their faces in a frenzy. His happy barks reverberated off the stone walls. It sounded, to Felix’s tired ear, a little like “Found! Found! Found!”
Felix smiled and patted the dog and his brother on their heads.
“C-mon, let’s go home.”
The end.
There you have it! All 7 prompts completed! Thank you for reading and watching these last several weeks! Next week I’m moving on to something else, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about this experiment. Was it interesting? What did you like about it? What would you do differently? I’d love to hear from you!
You have a knack for suspense, Jeanne. This has been so much fun to read and I'm thrilled to learn another wonderful thing about you - that you're a word artist as well as a visual artist.
It was fun to have to wait for the next part of the story. I think that is something about having everything instantly, it is actually a treat to have to wait for something!