Three Line Tales: Perseverance

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales prompt.
photo by Linus Sandvide via Unsplash

 

Almost five hundred years since the abbey was destroyed because a king needed a divorce and the extra revenues weren’t to be sneezed at either, and still the ruins fascinate.

He wanders the silence where grass covers stone flagged pavements, and birds nest in niches of crumbled stone where once prayers were muttered, lifting his torch to the sky opened by fallen roofs.

There is still so much majesty in the soaring stone that has never surrendered to either fire, cannon or the elements, so much that sings in the stonework and architectural grace—he tosses his torch into the petrol doused kindling—time to finish the job.

Three Line Tales: High tide

For Sonya’s photo prompt.
photo by Andrew Donovan Valdivia via Unsplash

She had never seen so many leaves before, not when playtime stretched long and hot for all the hours of a summer’s day.

She shrieked with delight as the hot wind made the rustling ocean swirl and dance, rising at her back full of voices she thought must be the song of the leaves.

But the song was a war cry, and the wind brought more and more fallen leaves, an ocean of them, enough to drown in.

Three Line Tales: An idyll

Three lines for Sonya’s photo prompt.
photo by Simon Berger via Unsplash 

A fairy tale, we said and sighed, pointing at the shining roofs and onion domes rising above the lake mist.

Whichever lucky person lived there, we said, must be in a state of beatitude, bathed in the beauty of nature, in tune with the universe.

We never wondered why the swans were all making frantically for the lake shore and flying far, far away.

Three Line Tales: Daybreak

For Sonya’s Three line Tales prompt
photo by Lavkush Gupta via Unsplash

The setting moon, the first pigeon awake in a winter tree and the meadow a sea of frosted stalks.

No sound except the cracking of the ice formed on puddles and the water butts round the house, no cock crow or fox bark, only the cold that cracks and the wind that whines.

An ordinary August morning, and the first pigeon that will also be the last.

Three line tales: Retirement

For Sonya’s photo prompt.
photo by Marian Oleksyn via Unsplash

I look at the expression of the model, the way her eyes glitter with confidence, a smile on demand, and think, she has an assured future.

I look at the horse, the soft gentle eyes, and the pure white coat and mane, chosen to match the girl’s style, the article to be advertised.

I think of them later when they are older, the girl, still smiling, retired perhaps with a full bank account, and the old horse taken in the truck to the place where old useless horses go.

#Three Line Tales: Waste

For Sonya’s weekly photo prompt
photo by Nareeta Martin via Unsplash

The family members heave themselves upright, swill greasy hands clean in the outgoing tide and wade heavily back to the car, renouncing their rights of ownership on the rubbish they no longer want.

Grease, cartons and bits of useless plastic, unwanted distractions for world-weary kids, curl into the waves, drawn out to sea until they hit another beach where a gull is waiting.

Bright eyes find the plastic chunk among the pebbles, gull pecks, tastes and brings the inestimable prize back to the hungry chick that will die some short time later in the agony of strangulation.

Three Line Tales: Dancing

For Sonya’s Three line Tales writing prompt.
photo by Zac Ong via Unsplash

They dance in the waterworld, they told her, all day, and at night there is diamond light to transfigure the dance, even yours.

She looked at her skeletal limbs, black as dead wood, and the marks of the tomb so close, and she knew she had nothing to lose, it had already gone

They nodded from all the blank staring windows as she stepped into the spray, and in the morning there was one more foaming fountain beneath the dark-faced block.

Three Line Tales: Roses

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales photo prompt.

photo by Girl with red hat via Unsplash

It was spring, the birds were singing madly, the alley was hung with roses, and her feet flew as she ran to meet him, standing open-armed in the doorway at the end.

The future had been strewn with rose petals, a long sun-lit alley of fragrance and happiness, where they would walk side by side, hand in hand.

The alley is empty now; her feet drag through drifts of dead leaves, and at the end, the door is closed and locked, the dream fading.

Three Line Tales: Anonymous

For Sonya’s prompt.

photo by Sunyu via Unsplash

 

I can’t write your story, but it’s written in your eyes, the days of tracking, the fear, the fatigue and in the end, the men with spades.

They dig until they reach the heart and drag it out, still beating.

I have seen them, the cubs still blind, tossed in the waste from the cowshed, and whenever in the cool spring night, I hear a vixen call, I think of them, and all the others.

#Three line tales: Retribution

photo by Nimesh Basu via Unsplash

For Sonya’s Three line tales photo prompt

She hadn’t wanted to; he had seen the look of terror on her face and known that fear of the bike had been merely an extension of her fear of him.

“Lean with the bike, not against it,” he had roared when he felt her struggling, but she hadn’t wanted to lean anywhere, just for it to stop, and it had, but not the way either of them would have chosen.

When he saw the black figure rise up among the meadow flowers of the field, he had not been surprised; he had always known what death would look like when it came for him.