Takeover Day 2: Teaser Tuesday and a Collaborative Story Game

If you're just tuning in, I'm Catherine of Stray Imaginations, and I'm your supreme ruler for the week. I commandeered Briana's blog after sending her on a drugged chocolate-induced bus ride, which you can read about here. Welcome to the Briana-free jamboree. Party on, peasants.

That's right. I'm back. Remember those games and fun times I promised? Well, I lied.

Kidding. I'm not that mean.

But, first things first, TEASER TUESDAY!

This week I'm reading Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I'm halfway through, and it's already genius. Here's your teaser:

"Cinder opened her eyes. The netscreen on the wall had changed, no longer showing her life stats. Her ID number was still at the top, headlining a holographic diagram.
Of a girl.
A girl full of wires" (Page 82.)

Now, to the game!

You see, I rule much like the Roman emperors. I know that the key to a prosperous empire lies in the peasant population, and their tendency to wish for a thing called happiness. The leaders of Rome did this by winning wars and having a lot of money-- something which, sadly, I cannot do-- but also by entertaining the people, thus manipulating them into thinking they were happy.

In the Reader, Writer, Critic Kingdom, we don't have any arenas, but we do have our minds. (Honestly, if we did have an arena, it would be used for chariots and the 76th annual Hunger Games, although the latter wasn't very popular with the peasants, was it?) This is why we are going to use our minds and work together!

Seeing as all of you are readers, and several of you are also writers, I thought it would be fun to have a collaborative story. Anyone can contribute! By no means do you have to be good, you just have to know how to string together a couple sentences into something somewhat cohesive and understandable.

Here's how it'll work: I'm going to write up the first few sentences of a story, and then the next person will comment a few more sentences, and so on, and so on.

So easy, a peasant can do it!

A little girl stood by her bedroom window, watching the festivities before her. The streets of her gray kingdom were adorned in red and purple banners, and for once, the peasants were happy. In the parade that ran through the street, a short man in a Jester's uniform stood on a wooden cart pulled by midnight stallions, announcing the arrival of the new empress. Amazing ruler that she was, Empress Catherine thought the peasants of her Kingdom should be familiar with her face, the curl of her hair, and the way luxurious fabric draped her body. The girl stood, amazed, as the crowds down below threw shimmering black confetti, excited and pulsing with gratitude that their new ruler had overthrown the vicious tyrant that ruled before.
But then the Empress tensed, and her waving hand fell to her side. The crowd was ignorant, unknowing of the looming threat. Empress Catherine and the little girl were the only one's to see it...

Wishing you luck,