Three line tales: A step for mankind

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales.

photo by Neil Armstrong (via History in HD on Unsplash)

He stands, listening to the blood pounding in his ears, his circumscribed vision fixed on the blue planet hanging in the vast darkness, and he wants to weep with the beauty of it.

This is the greatest moment in the entire history of mankind, he thinks, no one, nothing has created anything to equal this achievement, and I am part of it.

Then his gaze drops to this unknown ground, earth, dust, a world where he is the first man to leave his mark, and he sees the footprints.

 

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Justice

The Three Lines Tales prompt is reflecting my WIP now. Even the photographer has the right name.

photo by Richard Clark via Unsplash

 

The river’s fury subsides, and William le Maréchal drags himself onto the bank, gasping, his fury the equal of any natural or magical phenomenon.

Striguil, so close, almost within his grasp—he could almost hear the feeble cries of the woman he would take, by force if she resisted, in order to legitimate his claim—and to be denied it by the unholy workings of a succubus.

From the lake, calm now in the evening sun, a woman’s voice rises in a gale of bright laughter—For all your toadying and flattering of kings, your line will never possess these stones, de Clare’s bones and the inheritance of his daughters.

 

 

Microfiction 150 words: Running with fire

 

Fire-Carrier was old and slow. The people waited for her in the safe place, anxiety squirming like sickness in their bellies. If she dropped the fire-seed, how would they make more fire?

Squirrel knew. She struck flints clean and sharp, not like the fumblings of Fire-Carrier, made sparks quick and kept them alive. Squirrel knew more than any of the people. That was why Chief hated and feared her. She had hair the colour of squirrel fur, long legs that could run, like the new people, like her father. She knew Chief was afraid enough to kill her. She knew his thoughts before he knew them himself.

She had found her own safe place and would go there, before the night-fear drove Chief to smash her head with a stone. She had her own flints, shaped sharp, and a glitter-stone. She would survive. Until she found her father’s people.

#writephoto: Vibes

This is for Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt.

Usually, when you visit an old house with the prospect of buying it, you like to know its history. Betty stood on the landing beneath a grimy fanlight that transformed sunlight into thundercloud, looked at the doors grinning on either side of the long, dusty corridor, with their promise of secrets to be uncovered, and she shivered.

Usually, she would have been poking about in the empty rooms, throwing open windows and imagining, planning, projecting. She knew, without even looking, that these windows were not meant to open, the hush in these rooms was the silence of locked drawers.

Usually, she would have been full of questions about who, how long, and why. The silence dared her to stir the dust. She backed away. This time, she decided, she didn’t want to know.

Three Line Tales: Shark

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales prompt.

photo by Kong Jun via Unsplash

In the café the local radio talked about nothing else, the tiger shark, possibly, and the preparations to ‘deal with it’.

“No going in the sea for you two today,” they said, the parents, settling down under the beach umbrella where mother took out her book and father promptly went to sleep.

None of which stopped the twins going down to the water, just to look, and paddling into the shallows where nothing big could possibly be lurking.

Three Line Tales: Assignment

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales photo prompt.

photo by Les Anderson via Unsplash

Spring morning, not too hot yet for the shade thrown by the awnings along the street to be more welcoming than the warm sunshine—I wait for her to leave her rendez-vous.

She dresses up nice for him, I think, and wonder if she’ll hail a taxi or walk the short distance to the apartment on boulevard Haussmann where her husband, my client, will be tapping his desktop with impatient fingers.

She walks; I follow, visualising the dark mouth of the side street behind the glamour of the boulevard that will swallow her up, where a bullet will burrow its way behind her ear.

Flash fiction: Escape

For dverse, a 144 word flash fiction including the line ‘When far away, an interrupted cry’.

I have a good head start but they are crafty, sneaky, and they never tire. They’re onto me; I have to get out. It has to be after dark despite the curfew, because nobody just walks out of the city. I’m risking a bullet, but I have a plan.

Nights are always dark now, in these sad times, and the days are not much lighter. The air is full of smoke and fumes and dust from the buildings that fall down periodically from neglect. I know a house by the perimeter wall, abandoned and boarded up. Another unsafe dwelling. And the cellar door opens onto the outside.

The city is behind me now. I listen for my pursuers, when far away, an interrupted cry, mercifully short, tells me the trap has sprung. They might be crafty and sneaky, but I am the fox.