I never want this moment to end. The hammock rocks and pine needles prickle at my heels. An owl hoots nearby, and crickets serenade us as the twilight chases the sun away. Your fingers lace into mine, squeezing gently and I squeeze back, giggling playfully. The smell of the ocean and the forest is heady while lying in the crook of your arms. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
Music Inspired: Grandpa’s Song
I learned this song for you, Grandpa.
You lived to “see” your seventy seventh birthday, if one could call it that. I wouldn’t. By that point you were an empty body, hardly cognizant of the world, absent to the daily routine we all kept to watch over your bed. I took the afternoon shifts so I could sit with you, even if you never woke. I learned this song to say goodbye.
Theme Thursday: Survival: Kier
It wasn’t the odds that frightened her. They were against her, but not insurmountable.
It was the cold. Her fingers were becoming stiff, despite her efforts to keep them warm and limber. If she stayed in place any longer the odds would be much tougher… but she would not fail her kin.
The raider’s attack had been swift, leaving her the last living soul as she’d fled. She remembered it all, every gasp of ash and smoke choking out her village’s soundless screams. The image of the smoldering heap that had once been her whole world was burned in her mind’s eye.
Theme Thursday: Survival
I stared up at the coffee shop door and sucked in a deep breath. It’s just coffee. Just because she used a lot of emojis in her message doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people overuse emojis. Shouldering my bag like it was armor, I pushed the door open… And nearly […]
Theme Thursday: Clarity
The low hum of the buggy gave fits and starts as I navigated roads that hadn’t been traversed since my parent’s time. Marius drifted in and out of consciousness next to me on the canvas seat. I tried to shut out the stab of regret for leaving my family’s territory again, but it was all too real to see the groves of my childhood pass by.
The Divine Farmer
Aphrodite paced the columns again, probably for the hundredth time. “Do you have any special talents?” She asked. Asyran folded his wiry sun-spotted arms, thinking. The agrarian god’s thinking face made Aphrodite think of a beast of burden chewing cud. He was neither ruggedly handsome like Herkules, nor suavely seductive […]
Theme Thursday: Resolve
Seven hours had passed. If he was going to return he would have by now.
My stomach hadn’t been able to settle. I should have never left him to fend for himself. But he’d made his choice. And I’d made mine.
Going back was the last thing I wanted to do, but leaving his body to rot in a dried-up canal was not an option. The thought of it sent a wave of agony through me. I had to go back.
Theme Thursday: Effigy
Soft chants and the swishing of the druids’ robes were the only sounds from the procession. At its head the priestess carried a torch of alder, murmuring low prayers to the gods with misty breaths. Tonight’s Beltane fires would see many more fervent prayers before it was done. They carried […]
Theme Thursday: Acceptance
Daniel Anderson woke up gasping for air. Heavy breaths rushed out of him, adrenaline racing. Slowly he came to recognize the cotton sheets clutched in his hands.
Theme Thursday: Ego
Marius swore as he skidded back down the crumbling retaining wall. “Helluva blast, but he’s still out there.” He kicked the half-empty grenade case. “I hate to waste these.”