The District of Never Die

A man who had left his home town long ago finally felt a tug on his heart strings. He was homesick. So one day, on a whim, he drove back to the little town he once knew. But it was no longer the same town. Sure, it still occupied the same little dot on a mao, but that dot wasn't as little as it used to be.

The dot had expanded. The once stop-sign-only little town now had 3 stop lights and 2 Starbucks (whatever that was) in its boundaries. The neighborhoods had gained some new structures, the school had another building (a gym apparently - but why they made kids exercise inside when it was perfectly fine outside was beyond him), and there was something obnoxiously bright in the center of town called a Theatre. Apparently they played motion pictures there.

His house had also changed. The huge oak in the front yard was gone. The shutters were blue instead of green. A porch had been added though. That was a nice touch. He wished it had been there when he lived in the house.

He continued wandering around, going to places out of habit. First he went to his old bar, but that was closed for construction. Some new deli was taking its place - Subwalk, or something like that. The old antique shop was gone. Clothes had replaced the rows of treasures and ancient relics that used to fill the store. He felt like an old relic himself, except now he didn't fit in.

The library was his last stop. Oh, how he used to spend hours among those shelves, breathing in the scent of yellowed knowledge. He had been afraid to come at first; the rest of the town had changed, so why wouldn't the library be any different?

And he was right. The library had changed. The brick building looked old and decrepit next to the steel and glass structures of midtown. The sign was falling apart, the stairs were old and worn in places, and the doors looked like they could crumble to dust at any second. But he ventured in anyway, familiarizing himself with something he used to know so well.

At least the books were in the same spot.

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Okay, so I didn't incorporate the exact phrase of the prompt ("nothing has changed") into my response but i meant to. I was going to have the end say something like "Nothing has changed. Everything has changed." but it didn't turn out like that, so nyah to planning ahead. haha.
Anyways! This is another response to a prompt for my paper journal! Woohoo paper journal! I'm finally writing in you again!
But of course, what i won't tell you is that I'm avoiding my english homework for this XD

      For as long as she could remember, the full moon brought something new upon its silver wings each moon phase - new crops, new friends, new adventures, a new month. It was almost like the moon brought about the change itself, but it was always very subtle. It was like watching the clouds on a summer afternoon, not noticing how they transformed and drifted in front of your eyes until you awoke from a nap to find a completely different sky above you. That kind of change. Some people had called it hindsight vision, but it still meant the same thing. The world was always changing.
     Except for one thing. One thing always happened at the beginning of every moon cycle, and it was the only variation the glowing orb of silver above couldn't affect. It was a ceremony, a celebration of sorts. Her people called it the Full Moon Release Ritual, a time for the village to join the elders and bless their people for another moon phase, and it never ceased to amaze her.
     Memories of her first Release Ritual flooded into her mind. She remembered the huge bonfire, the smell of burnt oak and pine mixed with crisped meat and sweet lilac, the glow of the embers as they roasted their feast, the husky laughter of the village elders, the feel of soft elk skin under her fingertips, and the stars above bordering the reason for their celebration. Her mind sped over the beginning speech of the elders, their words of rebirth and blessings dim compared to the scene that took place afterwards. The meat was finally done, and as the ceremonial prayer came to a close, the growling of a hungry tribe echoed around the fire. Clay pitchers of a sweet but harsh liquid were passed around from person to person, and the meat was quickly divided into even proportions. As they filled their bellies with food and drink, the elders told fantastic story of their ancestors and how the world was created, filling their minds with wonderful dreams.
     As the bonfire slowly died, the tribe huddled together for warmth, and as the hearty food and potent elixir took affect, they fell into a deep slumber hunched next to their neighbor, who was just as incapacitated. She couldn't remember very much after that. Just the thought of the glow of the stars and how fragile they seemed next to the moon. They filled her dreams with sweet inocence, inviting her to join them in the sky, and she drifted off to follow, leaving the aftershocks of the full moon and too much tonic to linger until morning.


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Woohoo!! One paper journal prompt down! way too many more to go! lol
This story has actually been in my head since I read the prompt a couple weeks ago and I never really had the urge to get it out till now. It didn't really turn out how I had originally planned, so I don't exactly know how I feel about it as a whole, but I kind of like the idea.
Anyways, maybe now, since I've started writing in the journal again, I'll keep going with it . . . but part of me says that isn't going to happen >_<
I'm still so lazy, hah.

What is the function of a paper journal? You know, the little spiral-bound thing made of dead trees people used to carry around to jot stuff down in - those things. What are they for? It's not like a lot of people have them anymore, not in this day and age. Journals are things of the past, replaced by blogs and online communities. People flock to them to write down their ideas, to spread their thoughts across a wider range, to a larger audience than any little spiral-bound could ever reach. Instead of holding a pen, eager fingers dash across keyboards, typing out long-winded entries about absolutely nothing important.
So what happens when the battery dies for good? Or the glow of the internet no longer seems appealing? Or, heaven forbid, you drop your beloved laptop off a 5-story balcony? All of your hard work, all of those words and sentences and paragraphs, wasted. Gone. Lost somewhere in the world of a single shattered motherboard.
It's a good thing the paper journal is still in existence, or the future of literature might be lost in the realm of technology someday.

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Yes, I do realize that it's a bit hypocritical for me to be posting that here, online, on a blog/community. But I was thinking about how I bought a journal and have yet to actually write anything in it, and yet, I've been posting like crazy here. I just felt like saying something about it. I know it might not be true, and that the future of literature will be fine, be it in the hands of a spiral-bound or a motherboard. This is just something random I felt like writing.
And for those of you that do have an actual journal with paper and pens and ink and everything, good for you! Keep writing in them so they don't get lonely.