May 2022 Writing Challenge: Sensory experiences

Question

As decided by vote, here's the next challenge, proposed by Mary:

Write a scene where the point of view character comments on sensory experiences from at least three different senses.

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Answer 1

Ava walked slowly toward the room. The smell of burning wax already reached her in the corridor, and how the burning candles had warmed the room.

She reached the door. The other two girls sat, with a tray of sweets -- pastel even beneath their sugary coating -- on the table before them. For a moment, it looked like one of the dinner parties that her parents held, but the girls talked in low voices, as if nervous at being summoned to a dinner party like an adult.

She knew how that felt.

The pale-haired girl looked up. "Oh, we -- " Then she looked from side to side, as if wondering whether she needed to wait for an introduction.

"Come in, Ava." Isabelle swept into the room. "Ava, these are Charlotte-Rose -- " The pale-haired girl nodded. "And Delia." The dark-haired girl, sitting back in her chair, also nodded.

"Come have the sweets," said Delia. "Charlotte-Rose and I have tried to determine which one is which."

"I think the red colored ones are strawberries," said Charlotte-Rose, and Ava came to eat. The sweet flavor was not quite clear to her. She tried another.

Answer 2

Title-The Festival of Avarice

Every cart and vendor stand in Everdark City was covered in blood-red decorations outlined with gold. Music and the shouting of revelrous partiers reached the black clouds above, and the noise only grew louder the further Azul walked into the festival.

Demons from every corner of the Nine Realms had gathered for the celebration. There were Wrath demons with wide jaws and knifelike teeth, Greed demons with pointed jaws and bright orange eyes, and more than a few Nightmare demons. Those monsters were red and gold and moved like living shadows.

In the host of colorful partiers, no one noticed Azul. Why would they? She was just a little blue Gluttony demon who was not much taller than the average child.

Most of these partiers could trample her and not even notice.

Besides, they were here for one reason and one reason only. The food here was fantastic, and it never ran out.

Everywhere Azul turned the mouth-watering aroma of sizzling steaks, fresh vegetables, and savory desserts came rushing toward her. The smell made her head spin.

She wanted to try it all. She had to try it all.

She piled heap after heap of delectable food onto her plate, building a structure that reached to the sky.

“Little missy, there’s no way you can eat all that without getting a stomach ache,” one of the vendors told her.

The crowd gasped and went silent immediately.

Did this guy have no idea who she was?

Azul devoured her whole mountain of food and the plate beneath it in a single gulp. The man stood there, stunned. Azul delicately wiped her mouth with a napkin, cleaning off the blood-red stain.

“I’m the health inspector. And I can tell from one bite that you never washed your hands before handling your poorly cooked chicken,” Azul explained.

His food somehow tasted raw, rubbery, and burnt all at once. Disgusting. If Azul had not intervened, someone would have died of food poisoning.

She pushed the man out the way, wrenched her jaw open to a monstrous size, and ate his entire vendor stand with one bite.

The dirt was soft like butter, melting in her mouth. The wooden boards creaked and groaned as Azul devoured them in a single gulp.

Delicious. The perfect thing to wash out the taste of the atrocious food that horrid man gave her.

That day Azul ate thirty-thousand spicy meat dishes, four thousand crisp salads, and nine-hundred tooth-meltingly sweet desserts. She got free samples of them all.

Nobody loved her job more than she did.

Answer 3

It felt like she had been falling forever.

She'd been terrified in the beginning, waking up surrounded by darkness and finding no purchase beneath her feet, nor anything to grasp at. But eventually she'd tired of panicking, and came to terms with the unchanging plummeting.

She was pretty sure she was falling. It felt like she was. It was hard to be really sure, though. There was no fast approaching ground to be seen. In fact there was nothing to be seen, except her own body. But she could feel the air rushing by, hear it whistling in her ears, feel it pull at her clothes and hair.

She twisted around in the air, turning her back toward the wind. She closed her eyes and tried to think of what had come before all this falling. But nothing came to mind. She knew of ground and grass and trees, of sun and clouds, houses and streets, but she couldn't honestly remember walking amongst them.

Maybe things would make more sense after a nap.