Photo: Esperanza Algaba Davila on Unsplash
They didn’t think they’d leave such an impression. After all, they were only passing through, a transient band of transients in a town built on foundations set in stone.
And yet, as they left, colored wagons clattering on paved roads not made for wooden wheels or tender hooves, they were followed by a line of children.
Like a piped piper for the unloved. Seeking a better home.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Impact in 67 words
“You cannot avoid her forever,” Mom’s sewing barely paused as she cut the thread and got another length through the eye of the needle, “not when Alice lives but an arm’s length away.”
I hunched miserably over my own sewing, the tip of my tongue lodged against my teeth where it would not show but can still provide me some security. The ‘hidden’ stitch kept sprouting comas of thread on the side of the hem one wasn’t supposed to notice any. I was hopeless at needlework. Mom still insisted.
I avoided you finding safety pins in my hem, I thought to myself, and our cramped quarters allow even less than arm’s length.
“I’ll go around,” I tried.
Mom actually snorted. “You think Mrs. Munster will become your thoroughfare?”
I shrugged. Mrs. Munster’s house bridged the alley. She was a dragon, but I just couldn’t face Alice. I was too ashamed.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
They found the photo in his wallet. No address on its back. No date.
“This could be anywhere,” Deena said.
Neal sighed. He hadn’t seen Dad for years. The reclusive elder had been an aloof parent, and while Neal had yearned for more connection, it always took so much work … with scarce actual return.
“I know where it is.” Aunt Leah fingered the yellowed photograph. “It’s the Mendelsons’ house. I always suspected he and Meir had a thing. Such secret it had to be.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Such a shame. To have to hide love this way.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash
They never did make it back from their destination. Not for lack of trying. Not for lack of plans. Not even for lack of courage or stamina or all the things that make a journey circular. There and back again. Like Bilbo Baggins looking for an adventure and finding more than he had bargained for (or perhaps precisely what he needed); they, too, found more along the way than they had intended.
The path slowed everything. Time turned to stone.
And when it was over, said and done, it was a time and there was never enough of it.
They took too long.
So much that life passed by before it could lead them back to where they had come from.
Perhaps where they ended was precisely where they needed to go.
Only that unlike Bilbo, they did not return to their Bag End.
(Prompt: from “A Time” by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke)
For the dVerse Prosery Challenge: A Time
Photo: Thais Ribeiro on Unsplash
“Mama, he’s touching me!”
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
“Mama, he’s breathing on me!”
She inhaled.
“How come he always gets the window?”
She sighed.
“I don’t have room!”
She braked.
“Stop this or you can all walk home!”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Jostle in 42 words
He walked around the boat.
Excellent. Most people would not give it another look, which was exactly what he had intended.
They’d done a good job, aging the structure so it seems derelict, abandoned, old.
The bits of metal, old jerrycans and the ‘who-knows-what-plagues-hide-under-this-junk’ that were strewn about only augmented the effect. The well-placed rusty barbwire didn’t hurt, either.
Perfect.
Very few knew that once aboard and down the hatch, the innards were state-of-the-art creature comforts and the latest in surveillance.
There had been too many botched drops lately. Too many intercepted by an over-zealous coast guard. It was a shame that their contact inside had been exposed and that greasing of hands was no longer appreciated. Mateo had been taken care of, of course, to minimize risk of blathering. But supplies still needed to get through. Profits required solutions.
He nodded his approval.
Beside him, Boris exhaled. “Thanks, Boss.”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Sue Vincent
Her people came from the place where the mist rests on the turf and the ladder to and from the heavens can unfurl. It was where they all still lived.
It breathes, mist does. The fog kisses the lungs in moisture like that from which all of them had come: the womb, the sea, the ocean sky.
Alana still dreamed of days before her mind awoke to awareness. Cocooned inside her mother, growing to the beat of steady drums and gurgling songs.
“Wombs are portable heaven,” her grandmother said, the peat spade matching her words thump to thunk. “All is created. All is attended to. All is removed that no longer belongs. It is magic personified.”
And magic has a price, Alana thought. For all things do. Sometimes it sends a mother back to heaven. Sometimes it sends back both if the ladder into heaven leans in too close.
Her grandmother, Meara The Midwife, had delivered her into the world. As she had practically everyone Alana knew. Nana also helped ease the passage of women, including that of her own daughter Nola – Alana’s mother – back into the mists of old where breath was no longer needed to sustain the soul.
“It is a blessing to be from the land of mist,” Nana’s strong arms tossed a steady stream of peat blocks for Alana to stack. “Even if blessings can carry a cost,” she added, pausing for a moment to rub the small of her back, and to regard the ten-year-old.
The child’s auburn curls escaped the confines of her kerchief and any ties and ribbons one tried to wrestle them into. She was a quiet one, even as a wee lass, green-flecked eyes like moss on peat and cheeks like peaches in cream. Observing. Taking in.
She’s one for the mists, Meara thought, but never said. One did not make words for such things. Not for anyone. Let alone for the granddaughter one wrestled back from heaven’s ladder. Born too early, this one was, and at the same time too late for her mother’s life to go on.
Meara sighed and smiled small reassurance at Alana, whose features tightened in response to her grandmother’s exhalation. A mist child indeed, this one. Reading others in the smallest of breaths.
Nola had been this way. Sensitive. Perceptive.
Secretive, too. In many ways like the babe she’d borne. Half of her time spent in dream and memories of mist.
Meara shook her head to clear her own. She pointed her chin toward the ground. “A few more of these and we’ll head home. Let us see if we can get there before this bank of fog rolls down to completely mist up our path through the bog.”
“He’s gonna do WHAT?!!”
Oh oh, never should have said nothing. I swallowed and inspected my sneakers. Found a stain. Hopefully mustard.
Mom grabbed my shoulder.
“Marcus Anthony Jeremiah Rivera, what did you just say your brother was up to?”
Her face told me it’d be as bad for the messenger if I didn’t confess. I was toast. Benito was gonna beat me up soon as she was done with him.
“See those towers?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Benito saw a big rope between them and he said it’s perfect for zip-lining.”
Way Mom ran, she should’a been in the Olympics.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo by Stella de Smit on Unsplash
She walked along the beds,
Hands trailing over stakes
Heavy with vines
And sugar snaps.
Orange peeked
From underneath green hats
Far too wild for small heads.
Blushing tomatoes danced
Cheek to cheek
With peppers.
She smiled.
The garden will make
Good salad
Tonight.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge
Photo: Sarah Kilian on Unsplash
There is nothing anyone could say to change his mind.
Or his attitude.
Or his demeanor.
One could hardly expect him to respect those who practically asked to be demeaned, who did not try to rise above their lassitude, who did not take the opportunity when it presented.
So what if his wealth was carved out of others’ misery?
Someone had to do it. Someone had to step up to the plate and be the boss.
What did they expect him to be? A sniveling, prattling sissy like the ones who follow him?! They are lucky to have him.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Misanthrope in 99 words
Disclaimer: No offense intended to any amphibians. I know they are better than that. Image presented for illustration purposes only….
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