Good Evening, welcome to the latest in my series of using a daily writing prompt to spend 10-15 minutes getting some practice in (although I’ve been averaging 20-30, I get into the ideas). Please leave your feedback and your own responses to the prompt.
Prompt: The Gatekeeper’s Riddle: A gate that leads to paradise itself, but only those who can solve the Gatekeeper’s riddle may enter. What is the riddle, and who wishes to solve it?
Genre: Fantasy
Source: 150 Best Fantasy Writing Prompts to Spark Your Creativity – Writing Beginner
Time Spent: 30 minutes
Word Count: 1154
Prompt: The Gatekeeper’s Riddle: A gate that leads to paradise itself, but only those who can solve the Gatekeeper’s riddle may enter. What is the riddle, and who wishes to solve it?
It had taken me years to find it, but at last I had, The Gate. The Gate was something that turned up, often scribbled in odd corners of texts and carvings, throughout every culture in recorded human history. Most modern historians had not heard of it at all, and most of those that had dismissed it like so many other legends and myths as being, at best, allegorical.
Ever since I found a reference to it at the corner of an obscure medieval manuscript during my graduate studies, I felt there had to be something more to it. It took me an extra two years in graduate school, plus I don’t even remember how many grant applications, to track down a number of the other original sources for this ‘legend’ and I own dictionaries in twenty-three different languages in my attempts to translate them.
There were differences, but the brief tales all noted the same thing, in a secluded area there was The Gate and it was guarded by a robed figure. The figure told those that encountered it that the gate led to paradise, but they would only open the door for those that could answer a riddle. What the riddle was, none of the scraps reported, but it seems that only some of the people who found it returned from the experience.
There were only a handful of scholarly commentaries on these tales, most were theses or dissertations of aspiring scholars who let the profession soon after and the only one that wasn’t had been out of print for decades. The professor, a Dr. Maxern, had apparently disappeared shortly after publishing and many thought him insane even before then.
What Dr. Maxern reported was that The Gate seemed to appear at random, and to people who performed a particular set of tasks and guessed that many who had found it had done so accidentally. Even with the detailed explanations given, it had taken me several years to work out what exactly he was talking about.
At last, however, I had done it, and in the late evening on a cold, but clear, fall night, I was standing at the entrance to a cave that I am fairly certain was not on any maps of the area. I had spent hours ‘wandering’ without purpose, with a strange series of turns, reversing course, and performing such tasks as picking a single, purple flower and drumming idly on a fallen log before I reached this point.
I could not see far into the cave but a light seemed to be coming from it, so I took a deep breath and went in. The cave was straight and sloped downward slightly, and it was not long before I came to a large cavern with a fire in the middle of the room and torches all around. The far side of the cave there was a what looked like another tunnel with a simple wooden door covering the entrance, although a golden light shone around the various gaps and cracks. A high backed, wooden chair was next to the door with a figure in a simple, brown robe upon it. No facial or physical features could be seen. After standing in the entrance for several moments, taking in the whole space, the figured motioned me to approach with an aged hand.
Slowly I approached, but could see nothing. Even with the many fires and torches, nothing could be seen within the cowl and nothing further could be told other than the robe seemed to be of a coarse cloth and the hands, the only part visible, where both extremely withered, but nothing else could be distinguished.
A voice, at one and the same time, both dry and melody spoke. “Welcome, traveler. your road has led you to me and to a chance to answer the Question of Wisdom. If you answer correctly, I shall open this door and you shall step through into a paradise. There is no penalty for guessing wrong and you may walk away at any point that you wish. You have until dawn, at which point escape will be impossible, and only doom awaits those who try to force their way through the door.”
I bowed me head, “thank you, I have learned and studied about this Gate for nearly a decade now, and I have not been able to get it out of my head and thus I come to assuage my curiosity, I am ready.”
The figure nodded and spoke, “very well, here then is the Question of Wisdom: What life does one who is wise live to be worthy of paradise?”
The question seemed vague and too broad, but as I thought about it, and thought about the life I had lived, revelations I had not expected came to me. What kind of life HAVE I lived? In my blind passion for finding The Gate, what opportunities for happiness and creating happiness in others did I pass on. How much of my life had been lived on autopilot, barely acknowledging or interacting with those around me for long periods of time. I thought of friends and relationships I had lost, the lonely days buried in my work. In the odd anticlimax of actually being the presence of the gate, all it had cost me swam before my eyes.
I had no idea how long I had just stood there with a look of shock on my face. The figure had not moved so much as a muscle and hadn’t said a word since they finished speaking. After another long moment studying the gate and figure, I sighed and said, “I guess, the life one who is wise lives to be worthy of paradise is one who seeks to build a paradise for themselves and those around them.”
The figure was silent and motionless for a moment and seemed to be studying him, before raising a hand toward the door, which then creaked open slowly. Once open, and the cavern now dominated by the golden glow, the figure gestured me to enter. With another deep breath, I went forward.
The golden light quickly seemed to wrap itself around me, almost like a blanket, and after a moment of warmth and profound peace, it was suddenly gone. I was standing in the living room of my apartment and a glance at my watch said it was, at most, an hour since he had found the cave, which was dozens of miles distant from where he lived.
Somehow, I had not expected it to be anything different than that. I had some understanding, now, that I had sought a shortcut for much of my life rather than actually enjoying my life and making it better. I knew better now, or hoped I did, and had my whole life ahead of me, and I had so many idea of where to go from here.
I hope that you enjoyed! I would love to read your response to this prompt as well and also what you think of what I wrote!
I hope you all have a wonderful day, get the chance to do or experience something creative, and I’ll catch you on the next one.
-Jon
Leave a comment