I tried entering Nanowrimo, but i don't have the time this month, so this is all i came up with. It's the opening to my story, Tempus Spirit, but it cuts out halfway through a fight scene because I haven't written any more.

“Sit in quiet room with a ticking clock. Listen to the clock ticking for a while to familiarise yourself with the sound. Then, allow your mind to wander. Cycle through thoughts of your hopes, your dreams, your friends, your loved ones – anything that will distract your mind from the clock. Keep your thoughts wandering but also notice the speed of the clock’s ticking. Now, concentrate on the clock and notice how the rate of the ticking changes. It becomes slower. Why do you think that is?”

He briefly opened his eyes and shot a threatening look at the blond boy in the middle, daring him to answer the rhetorical question with one of his trademark juvenile quips. He thought about how much he would have loved to allow the student to make his comments, simply to allow the teacher some justification for the remarkably long list of punishments he had spent time creating specifically for this youth, but reminded himself that it was far more important that the boy learn these lessons. The boy’s eyes seemed to accept the warning with a mixture of disappointment and irritation, while his friends either side of him sat there silently, listening intently and struggling to refrain from grinning for fear of angering the teacher or encouraging the student between them.

“The widely-held belief,” he continued, closing his eyes once more, not caring whether his students had done the same, “is that your perspective of time changes as you focus your attention on it. This is because the majority of mankind cannot comprehend the truth of this seemingly trivial matter. The truth is that it is not your perspective of time is changing. It is that your perspective is changing time itself around you. Just as the sound of a ticking clock only travels so far, so the flow of time only affects a certain area around each person. If your perspective changes your time field, then you will be able to work hand in hand with time in a way that an significant few have managed to achie…”

“You know, if you didn’t have to work with words like ‘ticking’, you might actually manage to make this sound impressive one day,” the boy grinned

The opened his eyes and glared at the boy. Over the many previous lessons, he had become used to their boy’s growing disregard for the sombre nature of his teachings. On some level, he found the youth humourous, but for the most part he pitied the boy, always wanting to be the centre of attention. There were greater things at stake than this boy’s immature, insatiable need for the attention of his fellow students, and as long as his carefree attitude continued, he would never learn that.

He managed to control his anger, and satisfied himself with merely glaring at the boy and planning which end of the punishment list he would begin later.

“I assure you, Kennedy,” he said, “My words are not uttered to impress you. They are for your education.”

“Master, it’s hard to learn from something that we’ve heard in every single lesson,” Kennedy grinned, “We’ve heard all this, word for word, once a fortnight for the past sixth months. We’ve learnt the basics; now let’s continue our lessons on the good stuff.”

The Master took a moment. It was not that he needed his response, but he wanted his glare to force Kennedy’s smile back from whence it came, hopefully never to surface again. He knew that the student meant no disrespect, but the boy could not assume that he was able to have the same jovial rapport with his teacher as he did with his fellow students. That would not assist with the youth’s underlying arrogance, a characteristic that the Master intended to quash over time.

He opened his mouth to speak, planning to lecture Kennedy about the way that any form of education works, but stopped. The punishment list in his mind vanished with a puff of malice, mischief and triumph, and he decided on a better course of action.

“Very well, Kennedy,” the Master smiled, “Rise and come and join me in the sparring circle. I shall then give you an example of what you so readily label as the ‘good stuff’ and we’ll see if the ‘basics’ that you have learned and all but cast off can help you.”

The other two students could contain themselves no longer. They turned to the boy between them and waited for his reaction, intrigued anticipation-fuelled grins spreading across their faces. They knew exactly how he would react, exactly what he would be thinking; in the last sixth months, they’d learned more about their devil-may-care classmate than they had about their teacher.

Kennedy was far from grinning. He knew that smile on the Master’s face, having been on the receiving end of it before. He knew, therefore, that it led to him being on the receiving end of something else – usually his becoming painfully familiar with either the smoothly tiled walls or the uneven concrete floor that made up this room. To him, however, having his body thrown casually aside by the Master’s superior fighting skills was the lesser of two evils; he didn’t want to lose face in front of his two classmates. He felt he gained some degree of admiration from them by standing up to the Master, but he would it all if he appeared to lack the courage to back his comments up.

He stood slowly, trying to make it look as if he deemed this too petty to waste his energy on and hoping he didn’t come across as reluctant to be beaten, and approached the Master. The Master took a step back, his arms still folded as they had been since the arrival for his students, moving from the centre of the circle to the southern edge. Kennedy stepped cautiously into the roped-off circle and faced the Master. Neither bowed to their opponent, as the Master had long since cast this off as unnecessary exaggerated courtesy, but instead posed in their starting positions and prepared to fight.

As usual with this form of combat, both took a moment of meditation. Kennedy closed his eyes and listened to the wooden clock nailed to the ceiling above the sparring circle. He focused his mind on its sound and waited as it slowed down. As the ticks became fewer and far between, he felt the strange but now familiar sensation of his time field changing around him, like fine rain embracing him from all directions. He opened his eyes and felt no surprise to see that the Master was already waiting for the student to make his move.

Kennedy took a quick step forward, clenched his right fist and swung it towards the Master as quickly as he could, his mind forcibly willing his time field to allow his fist to travel faster than was normally possible. Before his outstretched arm came into contact with the Master’s chest, he took a step forward to maintain his balance as he brought his left fist up towards the Master’s stomach.

The Master merely watched, his mind casually willing his time field to slow the time around him until Kennedy’s rapidly approaching fists were slowed to a crawl from the teacher’s perspective. Such an act was as easy as breathing to the Master and he now took the power for granted to such an extent that he could no longer remember a time when he had not been able to bend his time field to his conscious will. He allowed Kennedy’s fists to become tantalisingly close and leant ever so slightly to the side so that both fists narrowly past him.

Kennedy had known that his fists would not find their mark, but stubbornly planned his next moves. As he withdrew his right fist, he raised his right knee, flicking out his foot to deliver a swift kick to the Master’s shin. The Master, his time field passing comfortably slowly around him, merely bent his leg behind him, watching to see if Kennedy would lose his balance.

:)

Interesting, that was a well written fight scene. So this is your beginning obviously....Hm, don't find anything really wrong with it, just looking forward to more developments ^_^ .

|LXM|

:D Thanks. I really must get on with this, but uni work comes first.

He felt he gained some degree of admiration from them by standing up to the Master, but he would lose it all if he appeared to lack the courage to back his comments up.

That's it. It's good! It's great! And it wouldn't be out of place in a published book.