(Photo: Lucas Myers on Unsplash)
There was little in their heart
But ice
And calculated cruelty.
A wanton abuse of
Power.
Ribald actions of
A misery intended
To inflict.
The wreck they left
Of any who had
Crossed them,
Threatened to hollow
Even the hardiest
Protest.
And yet,
There were still some
Whose souls
Would not give in
To ugly.
Whose light
Resisted.
Insisted.
Persisted.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: wanton in 60 words
(Photo: Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash)
He was, but not quite, a solitudinarian.
He lived alone. His homestead perched atop a bluff where steep trails provided an effective fencing.
He offered bare gruff care for stranded hikers whose calculations of the weather led them to beg shelter.
Townspeople cast shadows on his hermitage. No sane man, they insisted, would give up their company.
He differed.
He came down from the mountain only rarely, for provisions he could not otherwise procure, his expression ascertaining that friendship remained off that list.
And yet.
He loved. The one. Before.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: solitudinarian in 90 words
She shifted her weight and sand squeezed warm between her toes. Heated not by sun – the orb still far too distant in such early spring – but because she’s been standing still so long that the permeating chill under her soles relented to the constant pulse of lifeblood in her veins.
A bird called. Another bird returned. An insect buzzed a disharmonious song. It will be summer soon.
She felt her chest rise in a breath and her eyes skimmed the expanse of shimmering ground, patient, waiting for the tide.
Today, perhaps, he’ll come.
Today, maybe, he will return home from the wild, where waves rose high and ships dipped low to the ocean’s floor.
There was a writing in the sand. A code left by the crabs. The gulls. The seaweed.
She waited. Wavelets licked her feet.
Perhaps today something of him will wash ashore.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“Close your eyes. Feel the levers of the earth move with you,” Moria deposited the words like diamonds lined on velvet cloth.
Lianne obeyed the first. Tried hard for the second. But all she felt were the tremors in her body, bare skin shuddering against penetrating morning chill. And the fear.
“Breathe in the cold, breathe out the worry.” The old woman’s voice affected little compassion, yet there was no shaming in it. Just instruction.
Lianne tried, but her shaking only intensified. Perhaps I am not ready, she fretted.
“You are ready,” Moria stated.
Lianne gasped. Could her mentor read her mind?
“No, but I’ve seen enough initiates.”
The elder’s chuckle, puncturing the solemn task, somehow eased Lianne’s mind. Her body calmed. Her eyes relaxed behind the wrap. Her toes curled around the softness of the mossy ground. The bottom step offered a damp welcome.
“Better. Now climb.”
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
The moon hid on the night they lit the Bobblins. Nature’s cold dark shoulder. Though Gary said it was Luna’s way of lending them the main stage free of luminescent interference.
Renee still felt a shudder run down her spine.
It was the depths of it.
The weight of memories that bobbed and swayed and listed ever so slightly over the mirrored pond.
Even the wind ceased. For the moment.
Was it, too, leaving the stage free of routine rustling, the air’s microphone open to the whispers of the babies, cocooned in color coded pastel uteri, waiting to be born?
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt: © David Stewart
There was a mystery
To their madness.
An uncanny sense of
Doom.
But she did not flail
Afraid
In darkness,
Whilst she could spot a petal
Bloom.
Instead, she watched
With rapt intention
As life suffused
Their eerie
Gloom.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Uncanny in 39 words
(Photo: David Libeert on Unsplash)
No wallet? No problem.
He’d lived without one as a child and did not remember being hungry. Or at least, not so hungry that he could not muster energy to wrangle grub from whatever lay around.
His grandmother had taught him. Raised through famine she had become an expert forager. There were few edible things she did not recognize or know how to procure.
“If you’re awake, you can find food,” she’d say.
He was awake.
It was time to dumpster dive.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Forage in 82 words
“This place will never do,” Aaron shook his head.
“It’ll have to,” Ella tucked the edges of frustration back into the crevices that practice had made almost foolproof. Almost. One could not get complacent.
She’d seen what happened when one did, and the cost was never worth the temptation of release.
“We’ll make it work,” she added before Aaron could add argument to what they both knew will have to be managed anyway.
The steep plot of thicket-covered land was all they had. A measly inheritance, perhaps, but better than the debtor’s jail … and the ways one had to pay debts with one’s body. Piecemeal. By the hour. By the man. They could neither of them survive it again.
“It is a long way down,” Aaron acquiesced. “The stairs are rotted.”
“A longer way up for those who do not know the path,” Ella smiled. “We’ll do fine.”
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
(Photo: Mabel Amber on Pixabay)
There was a moment between
Childhood and
Being almost
Grown up,
Where she knew that she would
Very soon be
Quite possibly
All tied up.
With chores and duties
Work and house,
Strung like eyes
On knitting needles,
In a knot of adult
Life.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Knot
(Photo: Amitai Asif)
The sun took her leisure.
It was, after all, the longest day.
She could, till the next time,
Meander
Just a little bit
Across the sky.
Peering down at the blue marble
She raised a ray to salute
The tiny orbit.
Odd,
That one,
In how it keeps questioning
Why.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Orbit in 50 words
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