Stories About Mesopotamia, Part 1

The Wet Season

By Samantha

Sitting on a hill in the countryside, looking up at the cloudy sky, was as boring as waiting for a newly domesticated animal to behave.

It was the wet season, and water was about to come down from the sky. Now usually that would be a good thing. However, since Kiki and I broke the irrigation system, we could be having some problems when it starts to get wet.

Kiki and I had been digging for silver with my mother’s very special hand ax when we hit something. We dug it out, and apparently it was one of the pipes we use for the irrigation system.

And that is why I'm sitting outside my house, looking at the sky, because I was banned from all our semi-fun technologies.

Kiki gets to try to help fix the irrigation because he is older than me, and like my mom says “He has a better mind.” Which I think is unfair, because I can write better symbols than he can ...

The next day I walked into the city with my mom and my little brother. We were going to see the new animals that were recently domesticated. We were also going to see my dad, but Rek (my little brother) didn’t want to, so we had to bribe him by telling him we could go see the new animals.

Rek says watching dad make axes and knives is boring. But once we get there, he loves playing with everything dad and his partner Miha make.

We were in the back of dad’s shop talking when we jumped into the air because of a bang we heard. A flash of a soldier dressed in black, with very intricate patterns in his armour, holding a silver spear.

Suddenly the floor started to shake, three soliders each armed with spears in the distance were coming towards the shop. “Stay calm and go down to the basement of the shop and get in a cabinet, make sure Rek gets in one too. Mom and I will be down there right after you" ...

[A note from Mr. Richmond: Thanks to Sam for allowing me to share part of her story! One of the great techniques of narrative writing is to use similes: comparisons that help the reader understand an idea or emotion by vividly bringing it to life. 

I really liked the way that Sam began her story (the very first sentence!) with a terrific simile that compares looking at the sky, waiting for rain, with watching a newly domesticated animal, waiting for it to behave. 

Using this simile is an example of excellent narrative writing by Sam (and she even managed to use a history vocabulary word, too!)]