Written on October 17, 2025 by Gale Striker
Category: Impromptu
Wind battered the window above her bed making the frosted storm windows shutter against the might of the gale. Elliana’s eyes snapped open, bags circling her pale skin and misshapen eyebrows. Groaning, she threw the covers off her body so violently her hand slammed into the wall sending a throbbing pain down her wrist.
“WHY?” she shouted bolting up from the bed and face first onto the floor. How could the morning be this bad already? She just woke up! After a couple of minutes coaxing her hand to bend in normal ways the pain subsided. A shower would surely help her stop shivering. Flipping the light switch she ransacked her dresser for the correct outfit for tonight, bumped into the wall fumbling the bathroom doorknob, and twisted the shower handle. Piercing cold water shot out of the shiny new shower head full force causing Elliana to welp as she jumped backwards on the wet floor sending her feet sideways. A less than graceful tumble left her lukewarm and miserable. These events did not bode for a successful event tonight.
Breakfast went without mishap as she stared at the clear blue skies showing her what could have been. Far off in the distance, barely visible through the layer of ice accumulated on the kitchen window, was a mass of dark, gray clouds rolling in from the west. The morning forecast estimated an entire foot of snow was supposed to drop before 10PM. Blizzard-like conditions that would only get worse throughout the night. As if the storm last week wasn’t enough when the weather suddenly shot up 40 degrees allowing rain to fall and freeze by the nightfall.
Taking a deep breath Elliana put down the phone’s forecast and stared at her eclectic collection of ships and captains. The people she looked up to would not have been dissuaded by such simple mishaps. Kirk had gone through countless failed negotiations with alien species, lost crew members, won all out brawls, and yet he never gave up. Picard got into a bar fight and literally lost his heart. Sisko survived fights against gods. Janeway literally condemned two crews to an accidental exile and never wavered in her commitment to right that mistake and help others along the way. Why would Elliana give up the dawn of the end of her journey? Hitting the kettle, opening her laptop, and tapping play on her favorite playlist, she followed through on her plan. Logging into every social media app at her disposal she sent out the final announcement. The event would happen, blizzard or shine.
The last sip of her Earl Gray reminded her to check the clock. Flipping open her phone revealed several missed text messages including one from Merry: “I’m here”
It was already 8:02AM! Shallow breaths, hands shaking, and head spinning, Elliana rushed to her bedroom and pulled on her peacoat. Shoving her laptop into its bag and slipping onto the sidewalk she rushed for the next bus. “Getting on the bus now!” she texted back, her fingers going completely numb.
“Where have you been?” Merry demanded as Elliana walked into the showroom.
“Where do you think I was, Merry?” Elliana snapped back as she wrestled off her peacoat. “The bus was 5 minutes late and I needed to send out this morning’s announcement!”
He furrowed his eyebrows pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine. You’re hear now. We have 30 minutes to make sure everything is working. I’ve already warmed up the projector for you.” He took the cover off the projection lens. “Do you have your laptop?”
Elliana’s heels thumped on the wood stairs as she made her way to the fenced off table. Taking the hulking beast out of her bag she placed it down as delicately as possible. She could not mess this up now. “Right here, hand me the cable?” Elliana asked with a slight urgency in her voice.
“One second,” Merry requested as he crawled under the platform and shot a VGA cable up from under the table. “See it?”
“Yes sir,” Elliana responded as she tugged the cable upward and screwed it into her laptop. “Any reason it isn’t showing up?” she asked as the projector proceeded to stay blank.
“Hey now, I haven’t even had a chance to set it up!” Merry’s muffled voice shouted from under the platform. A few grunts and steps later he joined Elliana on the creaky wooden platform. “Did you plug it in?”
“Of course I did!” Elliana protested as Merry looked over the laptop. “And you don’t have to disconnect that cable, I put it in correctly.”
“Of course, of course,” Merry muttered not bothering to lift his head up. “Let me check your display settings…” his hands flicked around the trackpad and keyboard popping up windows she’d never seen before. “Well that would most certainly be the issue,” he mumbled to himself.
“Yay!” Elliana exclaimed as the text document popped up on the projector. “Oh Merry, thank you so much!”
“No problem,” he sighed leaning back in the antique rush chair. “I’m just good that way. You should be all set for this evening. How are you feeling?”
Elliana paused. “Before I was miserable but now I’m just nervous.”
Merry smiled. “I can tell,” he said leaning over. “You forgot to plug in your laptop.” He dropped the power cable into the small hole on the floor. “I’ll get that plugged in for you. Why don’t you go ahead and enjoy the rest of the art exhibit. I’ll see you this evening.”
“Oh really?” Elliana responded. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“I’m here to support my friend. Of course I’ll be there.” Merry pointed out as he made his way back below the platform. “Even if it is by far the nerdiest thing in this whole museum.”
Elliana snorted. “I don’t know if it’s that nerdy…”
“You’re writing fan fiction live in front of a bunch of Star Trek nerds. It doesn’t get much more nerdy than that,” Merry shouted from beneath the platform.
So maybe it was the nerdiest thing. She shrugged. At least it felt good to do. She hadn’t had the opportunity to be artistically expressive since college. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you later?”
Merry crawled out and waved Ellianna goodbye.
The sun had set well over an hour ago by the time Elliana appeared silently in the dark art exhibit. Lights barely illuminated her way, heels thumping on the old wooden stage. Sitting down silently, she started her journey into the final frontier one keystroke at a time.
The Impromptu section of Sea of Book is a challenge where the author has one hour to write a story based off of three random words. They get no time beforehand to prep and must make a (greater than) 500 word story that somehow incorporates the idea of each word.
This particular challenge used these three randomly generated words: commitment, multimedia, season.
