#writephoto: Isolated

Another photo prompt. This one is Sue Vincent’s Thursday prompt. Follow it here and join in.

Wind howled down from the moors in a familiar way, like an old dog locked out in the rain. She wanted to tell it she’d heard it all before and she wasn’t impressed. The sun was setting. It was always at least half-dark when she arrived at this point of her journey. And often raining. In the winter there would be snow thick on the ground and she would walk in the middle of the road in the tracks of intrepid pioneer walkers.

The air was brisk, spring air, full of birds settling for the night, and the wind in the new leaves, rattling the branches black with rain. The road wound up the hill, into the teeth of the wind. Not a gale. Just wind. Noisy but not dangerous. Like that dog waiting to be let indoors. She took a deep breath and shifted her bag to the other hand. The last bus had gone hours ago and she liked this walk anyway, up the winding road, beyond the last straggling houses, and onto the moor. Round the next bend, after the ash trees, she would see it, set down like a sculpted rock, black and solid as the surrounding hills, thick-walled, strong-backed, amid twisted crab apples and ancient roses. Home.