Happy New Years Eve everyone! I hope you are all having a safe and exciting evening and you are reading to put 2024 behind us and hit the ground running for 2025! Here is my final Writing Prompt for 2024, I hope you enjoy!
Please leave your feedback, I would really appreciate it! If you have your own response to this prompt, feel free to share it! If you like what you are reading here, check out my other writing exercises and my books!
Prompt: Create a fictional character who has to complete one resolution by the end of the year—or face dire consequences. What happens?
Genre: New Years/Supernatural
Source: 62 New Year’s Writing Prompts For 2025 | Imagine Forest
Time Spent: 40 minutes
Word Count: 1550
Clint Morel glanced nervously at his phone, 10:23pm 12/31/2024, he had an hour and 37 minutes left to complete his resolution, otherwise he would be spending the rest of his life in servitude under Oberon. All he had to do was sing publicly, which he was finding harder to do than he anticipated.
It had all started shortly after midnight the previous New Years. He had been at a party in a park at the edge of the woods. Shortly after midnight, distraught and listless at another year ending with no relationship, the same dead-end job, living from paycheck to paycheck, and being sad and depressed with life, he had wandered away from the party, drunkenly, to be alone with his thoughts and away from all of his happy friends. He had not even realized that Fairy Circles were real into he stepped in one.
He did not remember much of the Fae World, but at some point he was brought before Oberon, the King of the Fairies and had been asked what had brought him into their world. He had told his host everything, and had gratefully accepted refreshment, not knowing until it was too late that meant that he was now bound by the ancient magics of the Fae to serve Oberon. Perhaps taking pity on him, or seized by the infamous whims of Faeries, Clint had been offered a way out of a life of a lifetime of servitude, he was tasked to write down a list of 100 experiences and activities that he would like to do in the following year, and had been given until the stroke of midnight on the following New Years Eve.
It had taken a lot of time, energy, and planning, as well as much of his meager savings, but Clint had done them all, all of them except for one. He had assumed it would be easy to sing in public, so he had always let that one slide, aided by his own anxieties, only to find himself nearly at midnight with just that left to do. He had spent several hours looking for a bar to do some karaoke in, but the bars and clubs were packed, had long lines, insanely expensive cover charges, or did not have karaoke at all that night.
Turned away at the door of another club, by an annoyed bouncer who had asked him with great incredulousness why he felt like a dancing club would have karaoke, Clint look at his phone to see that it was twenty-two minutes to midnight. Cursing himself and his anxiety he ran to catch a bus that would take him to another area of town. On reaching the stop, he saw the small sign that said that a bus had just departed and the next was due at 12:05.
11:51pm, Clint looked at the grey clouds and felt they were appropriate to his mood and what his future would likely be like. He heard a commotion nearby and hurried along the block he was on and to his left, so a well lit square with a fountain in it that had people milling about and watching a large digital billboard, tuned to the countdown for New Years, and otherwise talking and drinking.
11:54pm, Clint was desperate and there was only one thing he could do now. He sprinted toward the square, somewhat startling those around him who were not already too drunk to notice, and on reaching it, jumped onto the rim of the fountain and started to sing.
It was a song from his childhood, which he could not remember the name of, but he sung it with all the energy that he had, to the mixed confusion and bemusement of the onlookers, several of whom began to pull out phones. A busker with a fiddle seemed to take an interest and wandered over, taking up the tune and accompanying him until the song was finished, which earned him a smattering of applause and laughs of amusement, to which he gave a small bow, and he along with the rest of the square turned to observe the last few seconds of the year.
5. . .4. . .3. . .2. . .1. . .Happy New Year! The cry went up from everyone around and then there was an odd silence. It took Clint, who was practically weeping from relief and jubilation, several moments to recover himself enough to noticed that everyone in the square, even the clock on the billboard and his cellphone, had seemingly frozen in place. Everyone by the fiddle player.
The well-dressed and handsome man walked towards Clint with a smile, and just before reaching him gave a wave of his hand, and dispelled the glamour about him. Clint looked up into the almost hypnotic green eyes of the King of the Faeries. Green robes he wore with a crown of antlers adding to his already considerable height and a bright but somewhat hollow grin stretched across his handsome and flawless face, although flawless like an antique piece of well cared for porcelain, perfect but also delicate and conveying the whisper of its great age. Clint had to crane his neck upward with how Oberon stood so close to him.
“Well,” commented the Fae King, in a musical and rich voice. “I see that you have done it. And just in time too. Perhaps I should have made the challenge harder for you.”
Clint breathed a sign of cautious relief, “It was hard enough to do the tasks, and having such set and specific goals turned out to be quite exhausting.”
Oberon’s smile did not change although his eyes took on a questioning look, “did you not enjoy your year then? Did you not grow and better your life the way that you had hoped to?”
Clint thought about this for a moment before saying, “many of the activities I did were fun. As much as my anxiety dreads such public attention, even the singing had a certain pleasure and satisfaction to it. But with my focus on getting so many things done, I am still in the same soul-sucking job, I was once more not able to maintain any meaningful relationships and rarely saw my friends, and many of the moments in between were the same sad and lonely feeling I had last year.
Oberon rolled his eyes and leaned against the rim of the fountain. “You humans, you forget that life is to be lived and not earned. You spend all of your time working, finding relationships that fit some kind of lofty, romantic ideal, but ignore your partner and your friends in favor of wealth and position. You said yourself, your moments of doing an experiences things were the best of your year, but you spent most of your time doing things you hate, just for the money your society requires you to have to eat and live. How far your society has fallen. We withdrew ourselves from regular contact with your world when we noticed the start of this trend.”
Clint began to chuckle. This then progressed into a laugh and then into clutching his sides and doubling over. The laugh was mirthless and frenzied and brought tears to his eyes. When at last he had recovered himself enough to look at the impassive face of Oberon he managed to say, “you have summed us up very well indeed. We like to think of ourselves as advanced, but really we’ve just made our own lives harder.”
Oberon regarded Clint for a long moment as if he was truly seeing him for the first time before saying, “I you won our wager, so by our laws I cannot and shall not compel you, but come and serve me.”
“Why?” Clint managed.
Oberon shrugged, “you intrigue me, human. You have shown this year the same spirit that I saw hidden within you when last we met. If you accept me offer you shall be my servant, but the work is not endless. We live a life of leisure, even our servants, and while you will need to grow used to our fickle whims and complex laws, we are kind and generous to those who serve us well.”
Clint let out a burst of laughter, “fickle whims and complex laws? I doubt they are any harder to predict or navigate that some of the managers and administrations I have worked with.”
Oberon smiled, genuinely for the first time, and held out a long and slender hand. “What will it be Clint?”
If any of the people in the square noticed the sudden absence of both the singe and the busker, they did not show it, and in the celebrations of the new year most had not noticed it. The video of the singer became a minor viral sensation but was quickly forgotten. Clint’s family and friends did not think much of Clint not responding, he went silent at times, especially around big events from the year and then, it just became the new normal. They didn’t forget him, per se, but they simply didn’t think on him. The human world ticked ever onward, little noticing that one of their number, one Clint Morel, had made his escape to the The Land of Fairy.
Another one I had a lot of fun with and very well topical for the day. I hope that you all enjoyed it, and Happy New Year!
Hope you enjoyed and that you are having a wonderful day and get to do, or experience, something creative.
– Jon
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