Story Prompts: #1

Prompt: It was that fleeting hour of the day when the moon and sun are high and bright at the same time. Like many things in my life, these summer nights wouldn’t last much longer. I sat quietly on a…

.. a tree branch as I watch the stars align. It’s almost time, I think to myself. The witching hour. The grand clock in our school's courtyard strikes one in the morning. Time for the astrology crew to come out and study. Hopefully, they stay clear from my study. I readjust on the branch nearly knocking my moon water over. Though classes don’t start again till next week. The AP students just have to be on their top game. I on the other hand just need to figure out why this book is so familiar and why the potions teacher decided to give it to me for, “a summer’s light read”.

I have exerted all my options. If only I could just go home and look through the library, but my grandma is so cross about it. As the students rush out to the yard I count the stars in the sky. The chart in the book is different. It had 8 stars for this spell but in the sky, it only has six. What happened to the other two? This is the right time. The right day. The right season. The right night. Everything is right but that. I course through the book and make sure I didn’t miss anything.

A loud bang diverts my attention. A second-year dropped a telescope, how depressing. I turn back and the spell has changed. No, not just the spell. The whole book. It’s darker and eerier. The wording has gone from soft calligraphy to old cursive as if written like a journal. I inspect the book and every page is that way. I check the front for a name or something so I can return it to the rightful owner, but even that isn’t there. I begin to pack my supplies up, ready to leave the book, as it begins to glow like the moon. I look down at the students and they don’t notice anything. Can only I see this? I pick the book up and it stops glowing. Nervously I climb down from my perch.

I sneak past the AP nerds and head back to my dorm. Once inside my empty 2-bed dorm, I place my things back where they belong and try to look up some cursed object material. Throughout my search, nothing mentions anything about glowing objects. Unless you count a glowing head. I look at my bag on the bed, too scared to take out the book. I sigh and try to relax. Maybe I have just been up for too long. It has been fifty hours. I start my night routine and place the bag under my bed. I get cozy and try to relax. Soon enough I am drifting to sleep.

I awaken with a hefty thud close to me. I jolt up. My roommate is back with her large trunk. “I thought you weren’t getting back till Friday?” groan at her trying to get comfy again.

“It is Friday” she chuckles at me opening her trunk and beginning to unpack.

“Umm no, it’s not it’s Tuesday” I grunt back at her.

She sighs, “Have you been drinking or something, hun, It’s Friday” she tells me. I groan and get up searching for my phone. I find it in the bathroom where I left it last. I click it on and low and behold. Friday. WHAT! But it was just Tuesday. I was outside reading the stars.

“That’s weird,” I say.

“What is?” my roommate asks.

“I swear It was Tuesday. The eclipse was last night right?” I ask her.

“Oh, you got to see that?! Lucky I wasn’t even in the world when it happened,” she says ignoring me completely. I shake my head and sit on my bed hitting something underneath. I look under and it’s the book. But not only that it’s back to normal.

Ok now, something is going on. First I sleep through the week now, the book changed back? I think I need to go to the headmaster about this.