Other stories for this prompt

It was an early morning. Anna was going for a morning run around her block. She was always found doing something worth while. She had always enjoyed looking at books about other countries. She had an infatuation with countries that had different letters to English ones. She came across a book on the ground, with funny, squiggly letters that Anna recognised to be Chinese writing. She flicked through the pages and found something that really interested her. It had birds, letters, photos of females and males and clothes that looked ancient.
She tried to decipher what the writing said over...

The young man stared down at the small book, his middle and index fingers pressed down to keep the pages from turning as a breeze wafted over him. It was a strange book full of nature scenes and Japanese people in studied poses. But, what really caught his attention was the bare-skinned, almost European looking woman peeking out at him from a curtain. Her gaze seemed to pierce him and he almost felt that he could reach in and pull her out of the page.

"Hello." He blinked. The woman on the page spoke again, smiling at him. "Hello there."...

I looked at the passport, and then back up at the woman standing in front of me.

"Are you serious?" I asked, a puzzled look on my face.

She looked sad.

"What is to be funny?" she said, her broken English somehow endearing.

"I don't know how they do things in..." I turned her passport over, and looked at the country name listed. It took up three lines, and many of the letters just looked like squiggles to me. "...your home country, but over here we do things differently."

"Is me!" she smiled, and I felt my tough exterior melting...

I found the small book when we had to pack Grandpa's things so he could move out of that old house, and into an old people's apartment building. Mom said it would be better for him there, people could watch him and take care of him. Better care than she could, she said.

I said I could do it, but she said I had to go to school, and I never even walked the dog before he went to live on that farm we see on the side of the highway between our house and Grandpa's.So how could I expect...

"And they thought that was porn?"

"I don't think they would have called it that. Erotica, maybe. But...yes. There's something so innocent about it, isn't there? I love the kimono on this lady here."

"I can't believe you're looking at the kimino."

"This isn't your late-night shocker, this isn't your gorey pop-up nonsense. This is - I suppose it isn't classy as such, but it's... There's something about it. It's old fashioned. Charming in its way."

"They had very different ideas then."

"The world wasn't sexualised, I suppose. Seeing half a naked woman was shocking enough. We're just looking for...

Drawn in black and red on rice paper, she eggs me on from page to page. Her ruby lips start as an M, become an oo, before becoming an O in mock surprise as I jot down something flirty and sexy.

She peeks between my letters, between my notes and sketches, and I am not sure if I am going mad or not. My muse of letters and lines, a nymph of ink. I simply saw her sitting there on a bench in the temple garden, and was struck by the need to put her down into my little notebook....

She hid behind the thin sheet of fabric. Her hair gently fell upon her bare back as she felt the breeze gently brush against her bare chest. Her eyes shifted from left to right as she watched his every move. He walked to the edge of the bed and began to unbutton the wrinkled dress shirt he sport that night. The shirt reeked of hard liquor and a slight hint of nicotine. She breathed in the heavy scent of sin that floated through the room. Unable to control herself, she let out a soft moan. He turned towards her direction....

She pulled the book off the shelfe and flip over a few pages. The images were beautiful, the paper such a wonderful quality. She stroked it with her fingertips, feeling the inc on the page. What a book. So old yet in such good shape. The language was unknown to her, some form of chinese maybe. She could fing no price on it. WHat were the odds that she would be able to afford such a gem? She put it back and ambled through the store. Nothing else spoke to her. Finally she went back for the book and brought...

Scott winced as he saw the woman spread the fingers of her left hand on the table. Of the standard complement of five, she had only her pinky and thumb remaining. The others appeared to have been cleanly sliced off.

"Ouch," he said, taking notes on her chart. "What was your occupation?" he asked politely, trying not to let the sight bother him.

"Data entry clerk," she said in a laconic, bitter tone.

"I, ah, yes, I can see how that would be ..." Scott coughed to disguise his confused verbal fumbling. He wrote some more, primarily as an excuse...

We had gone to Ueno with the best of intentions, to take in some art and culture, but by 2 pm it was too hot to do anything but drink in the shade by the pond there. The lotus plants were fully grown now and spread out, standing tall, across the whole of the pond like a field of corn husks back home; in the middle you could just see the red and gold spire of the temple there, in the middle, rising above the lotus.

We sat on a rock under a weeping willow. Emi had told me once...