Yet again, last week was Week 20 of the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge, and yesterday the prompt for Week 21 got posted. In aviation parlance, it’s called being “behind the power curve”–you’re at a high angle of attack with full power but going no where. That’s what it has to be because I won’t accept the other possibility: that I’m running out of ideas, steam, or inclination.

No, I blame it on the pyramid.

The pyramid showed up again, for the fourth time. I’ve used the pyramids of Giza (twice) and “a pyramid of earth,” as in a pile of dirt as someone dug a hole. I wasn’t sure I could come up with a fourth, original use of the word. Jennie Coughlin, who posts the weekly prompts for the challenge, reminded me that it could be a prism, but since I didn’t come up with that, I thought it might be cheating.

The solution was a New World pyramid but with a bit of a twist. Here’s last week’s role of the cubes: 

And here’s what I saw: l. to r. – lock/padlock; turtle/tortoise/slowness; pyramid; carrying/burden; flashlight/light/illumination; pushing/up against a wall; turn/right turn; dismay/sadness; actors/drama.

The story for this prompt is “The Tortoise and the Hare.” If you don’t see the link on the title, click on the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select it from the drop-down list. If you want to give the Story Cubes Challenge a try, write a story of any length based on the objects and actions above, then post a link to that story on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.