For your consideration: an illustrated prose excerpt.

So I've been trying to get myself used to doing creative work such as doodling and writing, and have been doing so by working on small pieces. Doodles, (very) short prose excerpts, and so on. Eventually, I should be able to build my stamina and be able to tackle more ambitious works (illustrations? actual stories?), right?

So anyway, this prose excerpt and this doodle go together, okay? Here they are.

The dog did not seem to be too happy about being stuck on the seat of the chair beside me, fairly high above the ground, and made its discomfort known by cowering and refusing to respond to any of my advances. It didn’t seem to see anything but the ground so far down, maybe its beady eyes could not handle the bright morning sunshine, or did it know something I did not? I had to stop myself from standing up and looking around. What was I coming to, getting the jitters from a furry little puppy?

The house was silent, and I should have been relieved, after all, I was alone. Left alone again to mind the house while everyone else’s lives took them elsewhere on this fine cloudless weekend. A real lull of a Sunday this was turning out to be, but I was not complaining. A veteran of lulls, I already knew that the fastest way to make the situation worse would be to start finding things to complain about. So despite not having the faintest idea of what I wanted to do that day, there I was sunning myself on the porch with the poor shivering dog. I did not feel like doing anything at all.

The past week had passed quietly by. I had ceased to mind the featurelessness of each day a long time ago. Of course I could have quite easily recalled what I had at every meal for the past seven days, give or take a salad here or there, but cosmetic differences aside, every day had been, and seemed poised to continue to be, like the last. Imagine a wall, high enough to hide the other side from sight. Extend one arm until the tips of your fingers brush against the stone, walk and keep walking with your hand touching the wall, and there you would have most of my life. There were times when I thought I was bound to at least find an opening, a crack, or even at least find out what sort of shape the wall was bounding, but it curved so slowly - if it even did! - as to seem straight. So I never did find anything. It seemed that the act itself of tracing a hypothetical wall was enough for me.

So immersed was I in thought that the first few yips caught me off guard and had me wondering for a while what they were. That mound of fur, of course, every puppy eventually finds their voice when they need to, no matter how tiny. I had no choice but to take him back inside. I supposed he had gotten too used to the cool and the dark, and true enough, once I had set him back down on the floor he stopped his yipping and scurried off to huddle in a corner. I decided I might as well fix myself a sandwich, it did not seem like anyone was coming home soon.