I was able to assist teaching my second writing workshop today at my internship, and it was so much fun. I’m in a workshop with two nine-year-olds from New York City. One of them loves to write fiction, and another one is interested in writing poetry. They’re both so sweet.

The instructor for this workshop set up this writing game for us to play with a card game called Dixit. I’ve never heard of it nor do I know how to play,  but it uses these beautifully illustrated cards that my instructor decided to utilize for this game.

He gave us each five cards and had us pick one or two that we liked, and then gave us 20 minutes to use them as inspiration and write about them. This is the card I chose to use, and this is what I came up with. Enjoy!

Annie stood still, staring at the statue. As her classmates walked around the museum gallery, looking at paintings and figurines, she was captivated by this one– a statue of a man with a crown.

He was a tall, regal figure, towering over her. He held his arm out over his mouth, as if he were gasping in surprise. His long cloak, its rumples and folds created by an imaginary wind immortalized in stone, flayed out behind him. He had a crown around his head like a headband. He had long hair and a thick mustache. And he was made out of grayish marble.

Annie cocked her head at him. She decided she liked the stone man because he looked surprised, unlike any other statue she’d seen before. All other statues she’d seen looked serious or even angry. She wondered why the artist had decided to carve him in this particular pose, encapsulating his shock for the rest of eternity. Maybe he was about to be attacked by someone who wanted to steal his crown and his kingdom. Maybe he’d just found out his wife was going to have a baby. Maybe he’d discovered that he was going to be having meatloaf for dinner. She took a step closer and squinted up at him, trying to figure it out.

All of a sudden, he winked.

She stared at him, her mouth hung open now in surprise. Had the statue of the surprised man just winked at her? How was that even possible?

Annie whirled around, trying to see if anyone else had seen the statue move, but none of her other friends from class had been looking. They were all talking and observing and writing things down in their Art notebooks, like they were supposed to be doing. She turned to look up at the surprised statue again.

He blinked. She blinked back. Statues didn’t normally move. What was going on?

All of a sudden, the statue closed his mouth and gave a huge sigh. His face had changed to a more bored, neutral expression, and his top half was now mobile. Her eyes growing wide, Annie watched the statue yawn and stretch. She glanced around, but still no one had noticed. She stared up at him in awe.

“Hello?” she whispered. Maybe he could talk.

He wiggled his fingers at her. “Hello, my dear,” he said in a deep, booming voice. She glanced around again– someone must have heard him. But her classmates still had not noticed the statue who had suddenly come to life.

“Are you supposed to be able to talk?” Annie still felt the need to whisper, in case anyone saw her talking to a statue and thought she was crazy.