Meet The Rain

March 20, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, children, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Heartbreak, Hospice, Illness, In memoriam, Micro-fiction, Premonitions, Things Kids Say 45 Comments

Photo prompt: Dale Rogerson

“I want to go up, Papa!”

He looked down at the downy head, at the small frail finger pointing at the Big Wheel. “It is too high, Son.”

Your heart can’t take the excitement, he thought but didn’t say. The rain made tracks on his cheeks but he didn’t wipe them. The hospital said he could take the boy home. There was not much they could do for his son anymore.

“I want to go up, Papa,” the child insisted. “I want to meet the rain there. It will be my friend tomorrow … when I go live in the sky.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Dedicated with much love to E., who I’m certain is excellent friends with the sky and the rain … and whose promise to send “hellos with the rain” broke our hearts even as it had become the gift of healing and courage to her parents.

Reclaimed Royalty

March 16, 2019March 16, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Grandiosity, Micro-fiction, Northern Ireland, Ram's Island, Royalty, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge 14 Comments

Lord O’Neill’s Cottage, Ram’s Island (from article in the Dublin Penny journal – 1830s)

He’d come from royalty. Or at least from those who should’ve been but history had been too blind to realize their value. He’d seen promise in his older brother James: a lust for power and a need to force his will onto others. But James hadn’t shown enough self-preservation for a prince. A pity … but at least it left no issue of seniority.

Since childhood the conspiring doctors tried to claim him ill with “grandiosity.”

His mother failed to see. “We come from farmers, Thomas. Always have.”

Perhaps she truly believed her forefathers were but serfs to the O’Neills, but he knew better. He’d seen himself in the drawing, and it fit what he’d always known: He was destined for more, a royal progeny.

He’d take the island by force. It’ll make them realize it was past time he reclaimed what was his by rights, even if forgotten by history.

For What Pegman Saw: Northern Ireland

Not For Sale

March 14, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 3LineTales, Briefly, Free, Just because, Micro Poetry, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Sale, WritePhoto, Writing Challenge 6 Comments

three line tales, week 163: a special deal

Photo: Artem Bali via Unsplash

I will not be for sale. Not today. Not tomorrow.

Limit not my conditions. Offer no terms for me.

There’s no deal worth my special. Shelves or fly off – I’m free.

For Three Line Tales

Out Played

March 13, 2019March 13, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, End violence, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Piano, Relationships, Solutions, Street Art, Upcycle, Writing Challenge 38 Comments

Photo prompt: © Anshu Bhojnagarwala

“It’s an effing eyesore.”

“I don’t care.”

Martin balled his fists but Susan just gazed at him.

She said nothing but he knew: Raise a finger on me and off to jail you go. The judge was clear: Anger-Management or prison. Martin took the former but could swear Susan’s infuriating behavior intended to get him the latter.

He inhaled slowly before turning away. “When Sanitation fines us,” he growled, “it’s all yours to pay.”

“Fine,” she shrugged. “Though I think they won’t.”

He glared. “Why? Got connections?”

“Nope,” she patted the rotting piano. “I’ve registered it as street art.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

When The Ice Breaks

March 10, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Greenland, Home, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Waiting, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 21 Comments

Photo: Barni1 by Pixabay

He said he’ll be home when the ice breaks.

And every day she waited, one baby tugging at her skirts and another growing restless under her heart, and tried to not look at the field of crosses planted right outside her window. Reminders of the many who the frigid sea or dark winters or the loneliness of this place at end of the world had claimed.

Some days she hated Greenland. The endless nights. The gnawing cold. The monotony of the same few faces and the bickering that eventually picked open old scabs and gauged new hurts for the next arctic dark to revisit.

Other times she couldn’t fathom living any other place. Summer’s endless light. The sparkle on the water. Pups, babies, and not-so-babies frolicking. The wide spaces full of breath and warmth that thawed old sorrows into joy. It felt like coming home.

Will he?

For What Pegman Saw: Greenland

Black Friday

March 6, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Black Friday, Cat, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, Motorbike, Photo prompt, Writing prompt 47 Comments

Photo prompt: © CEAyr

“We’ll call him Friday,” Emmaline stated.

Roger glanced up. They’d just left the restaurant and he had urgent emails to check. “Call who?”

“Him.” She pointed toward the bike, which was parked across the alleyway between a bush and a wall.

He squinted and frowned simultaneously. Emmaline’s cryptic tendencies were sweet sometimes but annoying most other times.

He saw no one. His frown deepened. A stupid black cat perched on his bike’s seat, fur puffed as if it had just stuck a paw in a socket.

“See?” Emmaline laughed. “He adopted our bike on Black Friday. Let’s call him Friday.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Ice Maiden

March 2, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 150WordChallenge, Castell Deudraeth, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Portmeirion Village, Twins, Welsh, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 17 Comments

Photo: Castell Deudraeth in Portmeirion, Wales

“My room is haunted,” Daria mentioned over toast and jam.

Margaret rolled her eyes and Daria stopped chewing.

Margaret sighed. Vacation or not, her twin was sure to find drama someplace.

“Honest, M! Something kept whispering ‘Aber Iâ’. What does that even mean?”

“Ice haven, Miss,” their waitress manifested with more tea, Welsh rolling heavy on her tongue, “also, glacial estuary.”

“And?” Daria pressed.

“There used to be a mansion on these grounds, Miss. In the 1700s. Was called ‘Aber Iâ’.”

“See?” Margaret looked pointedly at her sister. “You must’ve heard someone say it and it stuck in your mind.”

“Someone said it in my room!” Daria insisted. “All night!”

The waitress shifted uneasily. “What room are you in, Miss?”

Margaret glared.

“Might be the bwbach, see?” the young woman fiddled with her apron. “She can be restless sometimes but she’s never done no one any harm.”

Trivia:

bwbach — ghost or phantom in Welsh
Aber Iâ — Ice Haven or Glacial Estuary in Welsh. Also the name of an old mansion that used to stand on the grounds of what is now Castell Deudraeth, a hotel in Portmeirion Village, Wales.

For What Pegman Saw: Portmeirion Village, Wales

Merry-Go-Round

February 27, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Commitment, Determination, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, History, Micro-fiction, Route 66, travel 48 Comments

“Used to be a zoo,” Ol’ Joe stuffed his cheek full of chewing tobacco. No frowning from Mama could make him give it up.

I gazed at the empty parking lot. We kept the market open by sheer willpower and another mortgage.

Mama often argued it was money down the drain, but Pops would shake his head. “History is a merry-go-round, Penny. It’ll come back. We just have to hang in there a little longer.”

Then the two of them would look at Ol’ Joe, and I knew: closing the business would kill him. Grandpop’s life was tied into Route 66.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

The Perfect Shoes

February 25, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Family, Flash Fiction, memories, Micro-fiction, Old and New, Photo prompt, Shoes, Sunday Photo Fiction, Thrift Store, Writing Challenge 9 Comments

Photo Courtesy of Susan Spaulding

She came across them at the thrift store, squashed in a box along with moth-eaten scarves, a pair of slacks with holes that could tell many stories, two helplessly dented hats, and some fabric scraps.

She was about to lift a shoe to ask about the price when the proprietor glanced in her direction. “Those are by the box,” he drawled. “Take it or leave it. No picking.”

“How much?” She swished her hand inside the box and shrugged, worrying he’d overcharge her if he detected interest.

“Thirty.”

Her eyebrows hiked up on their own accord. The shoes alone were worth ten times as much.

“Twenty, final offer,” he misinterpreted her gesture.

She gazed into nearby containers till her thrumming heart settled down and she could pour something less jello-like into her legs.

“I’ll take it.”

She carried the box to the car fully expecting to hear the shopkeeper’s voice calling her back to point out a mistake. No call came.

Finally at home, she rescued the shoes, stuffed them with tissue-paper, and placed them reverently under Great-Great-Grandma’s bridal gown. Family lore was that she’d had big feet and had to wear men’s shoes. Those were a perfect match.

For Susan’s Sunday Photo Fiction

First Summit

February 23, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Culture, Everest, Flash Fiction, Karma, Micro-fiction, Necessity, Nepal, Sacrifice, Sherpa, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 16 Comments

Photo: Simon on Pixabay

He grew up in the shadow of Sagarmatha, where people’s moods shifted with Miyolangsangma’s and with the weather on the mountain foreigners insisted on calling “Everest.”

“Sagarmatha is her palace,” Dādā warned. “The uninvited should not trespass into the realm of the Goddess of Inexhaustible Giving. She turns many back. Some die.”

Most in the village agreed, and still they sent men to guide foreigners to the summit. Faith did not pay for necessities, while the visitors, eager if unequipped for the altitude and Miyolangsangma’s moods, paid well. Surely the Goddess understood.

“Foreigners are ignorant,” the old man argued. “But you know better than to show irreverence.”

He did know better. But Dādā needed medicine.

“I’ll stop by Rongbuk Monastery,” Garvesh proffered on the eve of his first ascent. “I will get the monks’ blessing.”

“It will not stop Karma,” his grandfather sighed. “Or what may be our last goodbye.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Trivia and Glossary:

Dādā — Grandfather in Nepali.
Sagarmatha — The Nepali name for Mount Everest. The Sherpa people believe that the mountain and its flanks are imbued with spiritual energy, and one should show reverence when passing through this sacred landscape, where the karmic effects of one’s actions are magnified.
Miyolangsangma — The “Goddess of Inexhaustible Giving” is a Tibetan Buddhist Goddess who Sherpa Buddhist Monks believe had lived at the top of the mountain.
Rongbuk Monastery — Also called the “sacred threshold to the mountain” is an important pilgrimage site for Sherpas who live on the slopes of Everest in the Khumbu region of Nepal.
Sherpa — One of the major ethnic groups native to the most mountainous regions of Nepal (as well as certain areas of China, Bhutan, India, and the Himalayas). The term sherpa or sherwa derives from the Sherpa language words Shar (“east”) and Wa (“people”), which refer to their geographical origin in Tibet.