(Photo: Emilie Dwire on Unsplash)
She was never big on plans.
It drove her parents mad, but her impromptu projects did turn out well more times than they did bad.
So they said nothing when she began digging a hole in the backyard.
And weren’t sad
When gold was found
Amidst the sand.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Impromptu in 48 words
“There’s no line!” Margo pulled Adina’s hand with one of hers and pointed with the other. “Let’s hurry!”
Adina followed Margo’s finger, shielding her eyes from the sun. It’s been a long day already and they’d only gotten in a little over an hour ago. The drive. The stops. The lines for the tickets. The lines for the entrance. The lines for the bathroom. The lines to the lines …
Her eyes met the target.
What was that!?
A contraption rose ahead, metal-barred and plastic-sheathed, crisscrossed with steps and zigzagged horrors.
“Come on!” Margo danced on the balls of her feet, ecstatic.
Adina felt the hotdog that she didn’t even eat yet threaten a revisit.
No way she was going up that thing. Nope. Ain’t gonna happen.
“Must be a reason no one’s there,” she tried.
“Yeah! Because it is ‘by reservation.’ Aren’t you glad I called ahead and made one?”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
He packed his bags late at night, tiptoeing around the sleeping figures of his flatmates. His plan would only work for one.
Well, two, perhaps … But much as he wanted company, he knew from experience that the only person he could truly rely on was himself, and he couldn’t afford to add the caprice of another human into an already iffy situation.
He made his way through quiet side-streets, ears perked and eyes peeled. He would approach the lot from the back, scale the pole, rope and lug his luggage up, distribute the weight, check the dials.
Takeoff before dawn.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
There it was.
Now she knew what would certainly happen. It did not matter that the calendar had counted down the days for many weeks. It did not matter that arrangements have been made, checklists marked, letters sent, particulars organized. She suspected, she resisted, she pretended …
Till now.
“Pink sky won’t lie,” her grandfather had always said. A fisherman all his life, he’d counted on the minutia of the heavens to warn or greet his days.
She’d learned to accept his observations, no matter how disappointed she was with a last minute reversal of plans he’d made for her to go with him. “The water is no place for children today,” he’d say. And saddened though she’d be, she knew enough to respect his judgment of the weather, and knew him well enough to know that nothing she could say or do would dissuade him once he’d made up his mind.
“God may control the weather,” he’d tell her (though always well out of earshot of her grandmother, who would’ve boxed his ears for speaking heresy, grown man or not). “But to me the weather is the real God. I can’t see God, but I sure can see these skies, and I know what they tell me. I heed those clouds. I heed those waves. I heed those colors in the sky.”
And heed he had. Though heeding did not mean one could always escape the wrath of what was coming.
The waves had claimed her grandfather when she was not yet ten. A fast-moving storm that all had later said no one could’ve out-rowed. She almost stopped believing after that. Stopped taking heed.
Because if Grandfather couldn’t read the sky or if the sky could hide its meaning from him, why even bother trying? What will be, will be. Que Sera sera.
And yet, someplace, she never did stop checking the color of the heavens every morning. Somehow, she never did stop glancing out of windows, no matter where in the world she found herself, or how far from any seas or oceans.
Oh, she listened to the forecast. She had the Telly on while she got herself ready for the day. She checked the extended before she packed.
Yet she trusted few things better than what her own eyes showed her: Pink sky at night, sailor’s delight. Pink sky in the morning, means sailor’s warning.
The sky were ablaze.
It was dawn.
She considered herself warned.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge
In his dreams he sees a mansion, flanked by rows of old-growth trees, fenced by sturdy brickwork, gated by imposing wrought iron spiked by gold.
In his dreams, he sees a driveway that spells out the expectation of his wealth. He envisions sprawling gardens, floors of endless rooms, and lavish halls, and a multi-car abode.
In his dreams he sees the pools, the tennis courts, the deck, the dock, the boat.
In her dreams she sees a cottage on the edge of forest, amidst the rolling meadows heading into dunes and shore.
In her dreams she sees the cozy rooms, the closeness of the furnishing, the softness of the rugs upon the cool slates of the floor.
And when he shares his dreams and scoffs at hers and tells her that she dreams “far too small,” she knows that their shared one won’t go where they’d thought it would, before.
For the Crimsons Creative Challenge
The day dawned gray and there was threat of rain, but she wasn’t going to be deterred by a bit of dirty weather.
She dressed him in his powder blue slicker and packed a bag with this and that. She weighed the idea of leaving the cumbersome stroller, but at three, though the boy liked walking, he lacked endurance for it.
“We going to see Papa?” he asked as the train rolled into the station.
She hesitated. She was loath to lie to him.
“Not the one you know,” she answered finally. “Though he may become it. We shall see.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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