A Flash Fiction Story I wrote for my Creative Writing class

My Notes & Background info for this story

At first, it was really hard for me to start my story at the climax, I had never done that before so it was a struggle for me to start near the end without an idea of what happened in the beginning and the middle of the story. So I decided to look at pictures of settings and after a while, I was like "I'm feeling a forest setting" and I googled forest scenes or sth and I came across this picture and finally felt inspired.

I got the idea for my protagonist from this picture and that it represented her aesthetic.

Here are the notes I made for her:

A child born of the forest -- an enchanted forest -- (she was created by Gaia aka Mother Earth) she loves the forest and is part of it.

My idea was that this enchanted forest already existed before my protagonist was born and that once she was created she would be kind of like the life source or the heart of the forest, kind of like how in the 2003 Peter Pan movie Neverland is linked to Peter; the island goes into winter when he isn't there and back to spring or summer when he comes back, the weather changes when he feels strong emotions, etc. I think all I imagined for her physical appearance is that she has light brown hair.

Oh, and I did put Greek gods and goddesses in this story as well.

Then I got the idea for my antagonist. Here are my notes on him:

Something threatens the forest, a Darkness under the rule of the antagonist who was wronged by Gaia. Gaia originally gave him control over all the shadows in the forest to hide in and play with in the daytime and to consume the entire forest in at nighttime. But then he met Eris, the goddess of discord, and she stirred up some suspicions he had about Gaia but ignored until now, creating huge negative feelings in his heart and these feelings changed his magical ability with the forest entirely, making them as evil as he had become. He was created long before the forest girl was.

I got my inspiration for his powers from several pictures that I got from googling "dark magic aesthetic." Mostly the first picture, tho:

As for the antagonist's physical appearance, I imagined that he looks similar to Pitch Black from "Rise of the Guardians" with grey skin and black hair, only that his hairstyle is more like a mix of a young Justin Bieber cut and an emo style. As for his eyes, I'm not sure. I'm on the fence about either green or a bright, light yellow like Pitch's eyes.

I also got the inspiration for one of the scenes in my story from this gif I specifically searched for:

Lastly, I picked out my protagonist and antagonist's names because I had no idea what their names should be except for a very vague idea of what I wanted the antagonist's name to be which was "Some name that starts with 'Eu' and has an 'L' in it."

So I googled some names and it was easier to find the protagonist's name, all I had to do was look at names until I found one that I felt fit her, which turned out to be Caecilia.

The antagonist's name was harder, so I got my dad to help me figure out his name (btw, this whole time my dad helped me write this story and make it better in areas that it needed to be better) and we just looked up names and words that started with "Eu" and I saw the word "eulogist" and I felt like there was something there.

A eulogist is a person who gives a speech containing great praise, especially for someone who recently died (definition from Cambridge English Dictionary). Since he is the antagonist, giving him a name rooted in a death-related word felt right so I thought of just creating my own name for him: Eulogus or Eulogis. I had to decide on how I wanted it to be spelled, though so I asked my dad for advice and he said that Eulogus might make the reader think it's pronounced you-lah-gus. Personally, I like the spelling of Eulogus, it looks beautiful to me like a Greek name or something, but I settled for Eulogis (pronounced you-lah-jiss) so that there wouldn't be a misunderstanding of how his name is pronounced.

I also had another name picked out for the antagonist before I decided on Eulogis. It was Valerius, a Roman name that means "to be strong" but I really wasn't feeling it and it reminded me of Varian from "Tangled: The Series."

Also, since Eulogis had been in the forest before Caecilia, I had the idea that she never even knew he existed until someone (maybe Gaia?) told her somewhere in the beginning or middle of the story that he has been there the entire time. Ooohh!! I just got an idea! Maybe they knew each other at some point or met once briefly and then never saw each other again until years later!

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That's all for the background info and my thought behind the story, this honestly felt like I was creating OC's like many artists on social media have and it kinda is cuz these are original characters that I made up. The part after this will be the story so I hope you found this fascinating :)

Edit 3/9/22: OMG I just got another idea! I've decided that Eulogis has green eyes, both he and Caecilia have green eyes because it's Gaia's signature thing: whatever living being she creates, she gives them green eyes! But after Eulogis basically turns evil, his eyes turn into a slightly darker green, and sometimes, very rarely, his normal, lighter green eyes can be brought back again on certain occasions, but very briefly.