Ain’t Got Much Of

March 4, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Elders, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Half-empty, Half-full, Life Lessons, Making do, Micro-fiction, Shopping, Widsom, Writing prompt 54 Comments

Photo prompt: Roger Bultot

“She keeps the shelves half-empty.”

I turned at the voice. A gnarled hand leaned heavily on a carved stick. The man’s chest was almost parallel to the stained cement floor.

I crouched so I could make eye-contact yet spare him the strain of lifting his head. He smiled. For such an ossified body, his expression was remarkably lively.

“My wife,” he raised an eyebrow at the display. “I’d space the boxes, but she says that what people think we ain’t got much of, reminds them of the empty spaces in their own pantries and how there’s always room for more.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Against The Flow

February 28, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Flash Fiction, Flow, Job satisfaction, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, Mistake, Supervisor, Work, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 16 Comments

CCC #68

“This won’t do,” Marc shook his hard-hatted head and lifted the dreaded red marker to the clipboard.

Nicholas scratched under his own protective gear in effort to control his irritation. Marc’s been insufferable ever since he’d been promoted, parading with his supervisor’s paraphernalia as if it made him a demigod. For the millionth time, Nicholas wondered whether Bob The Builder — their blue coveralls donning boss — had assigned him to Marc’s team just to get back at him for the moniker. As if it was Nicholas’s fault that the man fit the cartoon character to a T.

“How come not?” he managed when the silence lingered.

“The arrow,” Marc pointed the board across the water.

“What about the arrow?!” Nicholas snarled. He almost fell, painting the darn thing while standing in a dingy.

“Pointing the wrong way,” Marc smirked in evident satisfaction. “Won’t do to go against the flow, you know.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge #68

Hide And Go Seek

February 27, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Belonging, Bullying, children, Danger, Flash Fiction, Injustice, Micro-fiction, Mystery, neighbors, Photo prompt, Secrets, WritePhoto 20 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

It was the best place to play hide and go seek.

At least, that’s what they wanted him to think.

It was also the best place to go missing.

Not that they’d tell him. …

He had no reason to suspect anything was amiss. Not when the whole troop of them had ran together all the way to the weathered monoliths that dotted the small glens by the ancient cliffs. Not when the game had ensued with much merry running and grabbing and stone-circling. Not even when most of the children had headed back home for supper as dusk neared, but he was invited to stay “and play a bit longer” with a handful of the most popular kids.

He was new in town. He felt included. He felt welcomed.

He should have felt scared.

“He just disappeared,” they later said. “We thought he’d gone home with the others.”

“It has happened before,” their parents nodded, wrapping arms around the shoulders of their feet-shuffling children and forming a united wall against the ashen faces of the boy’s parents, the newcomers who never should have come, who never could belong. “The boy must have wandered away in faded light and fallen into a sinkhole.”

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto

Upstaged

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Curtain Call, Determination, Emergency, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, parenting, Performance, Sacrifice 61 Comments

The lights seemed brighter than usual that night. The music louder than remembered. The movements blurred. The words slurred. The heels on the wood rung jackhammers in his head.

He clenched his teeth and dug his nails into the worn velvet of his seat to keep from squirming.

She’d worked so hard for this.

The years of training. The months of practice. The weeks of rehearsals. The days of excited anxiety as the premiere neared. The long awaited curtain calls.

He was not going to let his daughter’s performance be upstaged by a migraine. Or a stroke. Or an aneurysm.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Kultuk

February 23, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Alaska, Flash Fiction, Folklore, History, Micro-fiction, Nikiski, Oral tradition, Tinneh, Tradition, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge 15 Comments

Nikiski, USA (Photo: Elijah Hiett on Unsplash)

“The spirits of water and sun fought with the spirits of snow and ice well before the white man came to this land aiming to tame them.” The old man spoke softly, punctuating his words with silence. “Our people did not fight the spirits. Birth and death. Light and dark. The Tinneh accept them as they do life.”

The elder’s story was met with quiet nods of respect. There was no need for sound when another was speaking. A log crackled in the fire and the hush of waves sang on the shore instead.

“Our Tinneh ancestors have lived here ever since Walrus and Whale were born from the womb of Water Spirit. The white man calls this place Nikiski. It is a fine name, but not as fine as the name it already has. Just like the seal that swims unseen, Kultuk still lives under the new name’s ice.”

For What Pegman Saw: Nikiski, Alaska

Tacked On

February 21, 2020February 21, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Creative writing, Farming, Flash Fiction, Home, Micro-fiction, Nourishment, Photo prompt, Promise, Silo, Working together, Writing Challenge 12 Comments

whitewashed-mill-in-mist-cp CrispinaKemp

The house was there first. Small and determined, it huddled against constant winds, braved the sun, stood fast through raging dust-storms and the terror of lightning.

Years passed. The land yielded. The silo was built. A practical thing, meant to store the grain in. However, tacked on as it was, snug into the back wall of the cabin with nary a breath of space between, it also contained hope. It held the promise for winter stews and for bread rising in the oven even long after the growing months had gone and there was little sign of nascent greening, let alone of next harvest’s ripening.

The silo became another sturdy thing to be led home by. There when ice rode in and clouds breathed snow and the cabin was too lonely in the vastness of being. Together they formed a home. An oasis of nourishing.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Bauble Bob

February 14, 2020February 14, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Be yourself, CCC, Creative writing, Creativity, Flash Fiction, Historical fiction, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Repair, Restoration, Stonework, Trend 6 Comments

tolhouse CrispinaKemp

His father declared him hopeless. His mother bemoaned his daydreaming. His brother called the boy a fool. His teachers rapped his knuckles, dressed him in the dunce’s cap, slapped his head. Nothing helped. His mind continued meandering and his pockets remained filled with bauble nonsense.

By the time Bob turned sixteen, the village elders had resigned themselves to him becoming one who loitered by the stream, carried water for the old, and attracted the cruelties of the young.

The last thing anyone expected was that Lord Bailey’s new wife, who hired the young man for the price of bread and ale to repair some fallen stone in her abode, would so enjoy the river rocks and pebbles utilized as repairs by Bauble Bob, that she’d have him adorn her gate, her walls, even her door.

Soon enough there wasn’t a manor around he hadn’t been called to restore.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge #66

Slip Slidin’ Away

February 12, 2020February 12, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Video, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Difficult decisions, Doubt, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Paul Simon, Photo prompt, Relationships, Writing Challenge 37 Comments

Photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Now that it was time, she couldn’t get herself to do it.

The ice around her heart mirrored the slick coating on the deck, the driveway, the car. The accumulation of cold thinned. Her resolve cracked.

It dripped and melted into tears where the memories took hold. Where the sweet moments were as real as the many that weren’t.

Perhaps she should just wait longer. Hope for spring. Pray for summer’s warmth. Forget the frozen tundra that their relationships had become. The hurt. The broken bones.

The more she was nearing her destination, the more she was slip slidin’ away.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Bonus track of the song that played in my head as soon as I saw the photo:

One With The Herd

February 11, 2020February 11, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Adolescents, Be yourself, Flash Fiction, Herd, individuality, Kreative Kue, Micro-fiction, Personification, Photo prompt, Survival, Writing Challenge 18 Comments

Photo: Keith Kreates

It was never about the things he wanted to do.

It was never about where he wanted to go, what pasture he preferred, which direction he wished to head.

Conformity. Yeah, he knew all about it. How it was the only way to herd.

Still he found small ways to rebel: He’d lie down when others were grazing, chew his cud while the Head Honcho was patrolling, turn his backside to the wind when it went against every custom to do so.

“You will get yourself kicked,” his mother, who has long given up on instructing him but still couldn’t help herself from trying, lowed in his ear.

“Or eaten,” his sister, grown and soon to mother her own, added.

Their mother’s eyes were sharp horns of disgust at the sacrilege. One did not talk about becoming prey where one was already primed to be the hunted.

He shrugged and refused to turn his nose into the wind, though he could not control the small twitch of his ears, flattening to try and discern danger.

The cows, one young, one old, left to graze at the edge of the parched field.

He remained with his head petulantly bowed, feigning disinterest in any thing ahead. He’d been born to the herd. Without it, he’d be dead.

But it did not mean he had to be one with the herd.

For Kreative Kue #249

Golden End

February 9, 2020February 10, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Going home, healing, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Santo Tomas, Spain, Sunset, Therapy, vacation, What Pegman Saw, Writing prompt 4 Comments

Santo Tomas, Spain (Ricky Rew on Unsplash)

It was a golden end.

To the day. To their journey. To what they managed to do together, for the first time in a long time without bitter exchanges that gouged their hearts and left them both scarred.

The trip to Santo Tomas was an impromptu thing. The healing they’d invested in was not.

“We could go, you know,” he’d mentioned as she’d browsed to pass the time while waiting outside the therapist’s office. It was always an awkward time, sitting together in the ante room, aware that what came next was lancing boils and airing out things too noxious to attempt alone.

“Can we, though?” she’d replied, layering many meanings.

“I think so,” he’d said.

His hesitation, more than anything, was what had her agree.

The therapist’s hesitation, too. She wanted to prove the woman wrong.

She watched him jog by sun-glow. Her heart warmed. They were going home.

For What Pegman Saw: Santo Tomás