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
They didn’t quite expect him to show up as he had, but most of them who’d known him weren’t all that terribly surprised. Not really.
Not when he had made himself comfortable under that very lamppost, every evening and in every weather, for as long as anyone could remember.
It almost made sense, then, that he would.
Manifest.
From the beyond.
Some began to keep a distance from that corner after dark.
Others, though, just walked on by.
“Evening, Mr. Barns,” they’d tip their head in the direction of his halo.
Even when alive, he hadn’t been known to respond.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
A silver light,
In blue
It was.
A glimmer on
Still
Water.
A place of dream
Of home
It was.
A hope for
Time’s lost
Daughter.
Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash
Candle lighting
The edge
Of the world
And the margins
Of time
To the endless
Flicker
Of loss.
[For Kathryn: you became light eight years ago today. We all loved you. We all love you more.]
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Endless in 18 words
They left the corner light on at night.
A habit.
A ritual.
An understanding.
The stone path had been there before they bought the property, and the remains of a lantern post. It was right where they’d wanted a vegetable garden, and so at first the plan was to plow the area clear and remove the slabs and pebbles.
But then the hoe broke.
And then the belt on the mower.
And then there was the matter of their daughter’s bellowing every time they tried to work on that part of the yard.
She was barely two at the time. Not quite talking. And yet she managed to throw “No! No!” tantrums and pull at their clothing and plop herself in utter-toddler-dejection right onto where they aimed to work.
“You best give up,” their neighbor nodded her warty chin, sage eyes not unkind in understanding.
It was the Fair Ones, she explained. They had their own paths. Their own energy highways.
“The ancients had marked it. To hold space and to deter the mischief. It is easier. And the young ones can still see.”
They left the light on.
Repaired the path.
Moved the vegetable garden.
Life was better calm.
Photo: Dvora Freedman
She reposes
In white
Leonine
In the light.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: cat
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
The light on blue-gray water
Waves a landing strip
To bless an incoming flight.
For Becky’s January Squares: Flight
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Gray
She was Ethera, and she came at the peak of the longest night, on the cusp of the broadening daylight.
She was Ethera. A human. A spirit. A soul. Sometimes one. Often all.
She’d lived among them, flesh and blood and hope and heartache. She’d hungered and shivered and grew and raised and danced and cried and plowed. There had been nothing in her that foretold what she’d become once she passed the veil to the realm of Nether. Where summer did not come and winter did not grip the land and where the prayers of people held substance, unlike bodies, which did not.
She was Ethera. Unseen by most. Perceived by some. Hoped for by many. Feared by almost everyone.
Feared though she’d rarely brought on harm that wasn’t already in the making. Feared though she heralded truth, which for a reason she hadn’t been able to fathom, so many fought against.
She passed like air. Like wind. Like the willow whispering a breeze into one’s ear come silent night.
She was Ethera. And she came bearing gifts: Of scented fields. Of sunlit glens. Of fruit blushing ripe atop the trees. Of roots awaiting the fattening of rain. Of undulating earthworms sliding through the layers of the dirt to aerate the unseen.
As she could, too, pass between the layers of being.
She was Ethera. Some thought her fog. Some thought her ghost. Some knew her as the mist that rose to hold the moments yet to come and the droplets of the feelings those would bring.
She came at the deepest hollow of the longest night, and in her palms she held a bowl of alms, collected by the people’s dreams to appease the frost and sing the morning in.
For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo Challenge
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Till time alights
To set things right
May last year’s light
Fill this year’s nights.
For the Sunday Stills challenge: Holiday Decor
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
I remember
Past winter
Of old,
There was light
Shining warmth
In the cold.
I recall spring’s
Late blanket
White bold,
Under lamps’
Glow of soft
Molten gold.
For the Lens-Artists challenge: Cold
tucked away in the mountains
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