1. She patiently waited for his number to be called.

She had no
desire to be there, but her mom had insisted that she go. She's
resisted at first, but over time she realized it was simply easier to
appease her and go. Mom tended to be that way. She would keep
insisting until you wore down and did what she wanted. So, here
she sat, patiently waiting for her number to be called.

2. Here's the thing. She doesn't have anything to prove, but

she is going to anyway. That's just her character. She knows she
doesn't have to, but she still will just to show you that she can.
Doubt her more and she'll prove she can again. We all already
know this and you will too.

3. There was something in the tree. It was difficult to tell from

the ground, but Rachael could see movement. She squinted her
eyes and peered in the direction of the movement, trying to
decipher exactly what she had spied. The more she peered,
however, the more she thought it might be a figment of her
imagination. Nothing seemed to move until the moment she
began to take her eyes off the tree. Then in the corner of her eye,
she would see the movement again and begin the process of
staring again.

4. The wolves stopped in their tracks, sizing up the mother and

her cubs. It had been over a week since their last meal and they
were getting desperate. The cubs would make a good meal, but
there were high risks taking on the mother Grizzly. A decision had
to be made and the wrong choice could signal the end of the
pack.
 5. There was a time when he would have embraced the
change that was coming. In his youth, he sought adventure and
the unknown, but that had been years ago. He wished he could
go back and learn to find the excitement that came with change
but it was useless. That curiosity had long left him to where he
had come to loathe anything that put him out of his comfort zone.

6. The words hadn't flowed from his fingers for the past few
weeks. He never imagined he'd find himself with writer's block,
but here he sat with a blank screen in front of him. That blank
screen taunting him day after day had started to play with his
mind. He didn't understand why he couldn't even type a single
word, just one to begin the process and build from there. And yet,
he already knew that the eight hours he was prepared to sit in
front of his computer today would end with the screen remaining
blank.

7. You can decide what you want to do in life, but I suggest

doing something that creates. Something that leaves a tangible
thing once you're done. That way even after you're gone, you will
still live on in the things you created.

8. It was difficult to explain to them how the diagnosis of certain

death had actually given him life. While everyone around him was
in tears and upset, he actually felt more at ease. The doctor said it
would be less than a year. That gave him a year to live,
something he'd failed to do with his daily drudgery of a routine
that had passed as life until then.
9. What were they eating? It didn't taste like anything she had
ever eaten before and although she was famished, she didn't
dare ask. She knew the answer would be one she didn't want to
hear.

10. Things aren't going well at all with mom today. She is just a
limp noodle and wants to sleep all the time. I sure hope that
things get better soon.

11. The trees, therefore, must be such old and primitive

techniques that they thought nothing of them, deeming them so
inconsequential that even savages like us would know of them
and not be suspicious. At that, they probably didn't have too much
time after they detected us orbiting and intending to land. And if
that were true, there could be only one place where their
civilization was hidden.

12. There was something beautiful in his hate. It wasn't the hate
itself as it was a disgusting display of racism and intolerance. It
was what propelled the hate and the fact that although he had this
hate, he didn't understand where it came from. It was at that
moment that she realized that there was hope in changing him.

13. He had three simple rules by which he lived. The first was to
never eat blue food. There was nothing in nature that was edible
that was blue. People often asked about blueberries, but
everyone knows those are actually purple. He understood it was
one of the stranger rules to live by, but it had served him well thus
far in the 50+ years of his life.
14. He heard the crack echo in the late afternoon about a mile
away. His heart started racing and he bolted into a full sprint. "It
wasn't a gunshot, it wasn't a gunshot," he repeated under his
breathlessness as he continued to sprint.

15. I guess we could discuss the implications of the phrase

"meant to be." That is if we wanted to drown ourselves in a sea of
backwardly referential semantics and other mumbo-jumbo. Maybe
such a discussion would result in the determination that "meant to
be" is exactly as meaningless a phrase as it seems to be, and
that none of us is actually meant to be doing anything at all. But
that's my existential underpants underpinnings showing. It's the
way the cookie crumbles. And now I want a cookie.