Creative writing Bolton Manchester- The Fire-bird’ : Sketch a story with just FIVE words/ideas!

I am really enjoying several UDEMY courses at the moment including a course by Sean Platt whose eBooks on kindle publishing are highly motivating and energizing as well as practical.

Yesterday Moira Eribenne gave me five words to create a mini outline or story ‘beats’ and this proved great fun as it allows your mind to wander off in search of inspiration through association. 

My five words  were: Foil, Fire-bird, Tattoo, Baguette and Suspense.

How easy to build a tale around just a few words?  

It may also be interesting to relate such tale building to archetypes perhaps? 

Fire-bird is a red haired young woman who lives on the edge of an old alpine village called La Baguette. She lives with her grandmother Aradeema  as her parents died mysteriously years before. It is a solitary life and she is excluded from most of the village life because of her grandmother’s anxieties about the villagers.

 Fire-bird’s  her best friend is a strange, hybrid  creature called Suspense who claims to feed off the residual light from fallen meteors. Hence Suspense shines with a magical intensity  that empowers and protects the two women from the lower villagers who are afraid of the ‘magic’ associated with Fire bird’s house. However the canny villagers(mainly from the **** family)  do  try to convert the light for their own uses using foil balloons with only paltry success. 

 ‘My powers cannot be beckoned’ says Suspense in his/her grandiose but guttural voice. 

One winter day  a visitor arrives at the gateway to the village of La Baguette claiming to be the fire-bird’s long lost brother Michael.  He wears a tattoo which covers the entire left hand side of his face with a picture of a terrible electrical storm and a large winged creature carrying a couple away in his beak to a break  in the clouds …

Fire-bird is intrigued but Aradeema is wary and  Suspense also acts ambivalently for the first time in Fire-bird’s life.  Michael is given a week in which to convince the family of his identity. The skies become more agitated and Suspence’s energies become even more pronounced- even slightly unstable. 

Aradeema reveals she too wears a singular tattoo, this time on her left leg. But the revelation of its picture is delayed by Michael developing a strange fever and needing nursing. Is this a ruse to stay longer or are there secrets which need to be found to reestabilise the family and community?

Is the visitor a fraud or is his face story the truth?

 What will Suspense do and how will Firebird react?

Finally what does Aradeema know?