Plot Thickens

There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.
-Geoffrey Chaucer

In shadows, in secret spaces, people lean close with their heads together and plot ...

Plot what? This challenge asks writers to consider characters in the act of plotting something. Plotting often calls first to mind conspiracy and overthrow, but characters could just as easily plot something good: a surprise for a loved one, a marriage proposal, a wondrous invention. Or, take the meta angle and consider the plotting of stories and epics by historians and writers.

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
-J.D. Salinger

This challenge opened in March 2009 .