Story Starter: The Statue

This is a story that I started working on about ten years ago when I was hooked on romance novels but never completed. I really have no interest in completing it and it certainly is possible that someone else has already plucked this idea out of the ether and written the story so you may want to be on the look out for that if you choose to use this idea.

Otherwise this plot bunny is public domain. The plot, characters, settings, names etc are all free for you to use with no expectation of reimbursement. Have fun.

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This is a short love story. The MFC is an artist. Her ‘day job’ is painting portraits of people. She also makes busts of people’s heads, mostly rich people. She makes pretty decent money doing that, enough to afford a house in the country. Her ‘dream job’ is to sell her art in galleries etc. She gets an agent working for her and starts making pieces to show. She does paintings, vases and odd pieces. She makes this bowl of fruit out of clay and paints it so that it actually looks like fruit. She is very good at what she does but no one wants to take a chance on her because she is new and the art world is so fickle.

Her agent manages to convince a local gallery to show her and so she spends several months making up a few more pieces for the showing. She finishes that project but then is inspired to start another, a marble statue of a man. In fact the inspiration is so strong that she cannot ignore it. She goes to an art store that specializes in stone. She is browsing through the rocks when she is drawn to one particular piece of stone. The history of the stone is that is was taken from and old Scottish castle that had been recently torn down. It is very expensive and at first she decides not to get it but it seems to call to her and finally she breaks down and buys it.

It is delivered a few days later and from the moment it arrives she starts work on it. She can’t seem to stop working on it. She only pauses to sleep and barely to eat. She is driven to complete it. The night she finishes she falls asleep on her workroom floor. The next morning she wakes up in bed. She doesn’t remember putting herself to bed but as she lives alone and has no children, she figures she must have dragged herself to bed.

She gets up and dresses. She calls her agent to tell her the pieces are done for the showing. As she is cleaning her home, she notices that things are out of place. She becomes unsettled but there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation except that she must have done it herself. She goes into her workroom to cleanup but finds it is already clean and the statue moved. She becomes a little fearful. But she doesn’t have time to ponder it. Her agent and the gallery curator arrive. They view her artwork while she changes clothes. The gallery curator is impressed and is excited to show her. They go to lunch to discuss the details.

Over lunch, the agent mentions that the eyes of the statue were blue but she never painted him. She is alarmed. After lunch, the agent takes her home. She rushes into the workroom but the statue is gray. She spends the rest of the day catching up on work. Night falls and the most bizarre thing happens. She hears a sound like paint crackling turns around and finds the statue coming alive. She is scared to death. She trips over her feet and sprains her ankle. When she realizes he really is alive, she faints.

She wakes believing it was a dream but finds that she has indeed sprained her ankle. When she goes into the kitchen, she finds him there very much alive. She is shocked to say the least. Anyway, she manages to find some clothes for him to wear. She learns that he is a Scotsman from way back in the day. He was defending his home from a neighbor who wanted his land. He was doing a good job of beating down the opposition until one day the neighbor employed the services of a witch who cast his soul into the stone of his castle. He’d been there some three hundred years.

She goes to the hospital, gets her ankle looked at. When she goes back home, they spend some time together. At first she just shows him around her home. Later, she actually takes him out into the world. He is shocked and amazed at how much the world has changed and also scared. He’s not sure exactly how he will fit in. During this time, an old woman who wants to buy the statue visits her. She refuses. They fall in love.

The museum showing comes. It is a success. The old woman shows up and the statue mysteriously disappears. The artist is frantic looking for him but no success. What has happened is when the old woman cursed him, she, herself, was cursed to walk the earth until she made things right. She restores him to human form and offers him a chance to go back home to Scotland during the time he lived. He decides to stay with the artist.

The artist knew he was having a hard time adjusting to the new world he lived in and figure he was unable to fully adjust and so left. He appears days later on her doorstep. They live happily ever after.