Okay Friends, this week's prompt is:
"It smelled warm
and inviting …"
You don't have to include the phrase in your writing;
remember, this is just to prompt your thoughts.
In fact, if you're thinking, "It didn't smell warm and inviting, it
smelled like thick motor oil and burned rubber …" then go with it.
Have fun!
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My response:
I licked my chapped lips and peered around the low branches
of a fir tree. Short needles pricked my
fingers as I pressed them away from my face.
The fire in the small clearing was large … too large for a small group
of travelers, especially with the drought we'd had this summer. If any of the fallen needles were to catch,
the whole forest glade would go up in flames.
Still, the smell of roasting meat and baking bread brought
me closer, when I should have turned the other direction. I leaned forward, trying to count the figures
around the fire. It burned brightly,
illuminating everything in the small glade, but on a moonless night like
tonight, as long as I stayed out of the dancing glow of the flames, no one
would see me. It was too dark out here,
and their eyes were adjusted to the flame, not the shadows.
There were four men, large and muscular, with their faces
hidden beneath overgrown facial hair. I
wondered how they could bear the heat of the summer under all that fur. A boy sat on a fallen log near the fire. That wasn't unusual. When their boys grew old enough, the men who
traveled the highway through the forest often started bringing them along to
teach them their trade, whether it be as merchants or thieves.
What caught my eye was the smaller child, held tightly in
the boy's lap. It was a girl, and she
reached out with chubby arms towards the flames, cooing in awe and kicking her
tiny feet. She had a short dress on sewn
from a pink fabric, the likes of which I'd never seen before.
The men laughed again, the sound carrying through the
forest. I shifted my weight on my bare
feet and checked to make sure my hunting knife was still secure in the sheath
on my belt. The bread was rising on a
flat rock near the fire, and the deer hung over it. Three hours from now, the men would be
sleeping, and if I was quiet and swift enough, I'd be able to cut some meat
from the spit and snatch a loaf or two.
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I feel like I have to apologize … I had such a clear picture
of what I was going to write when I sat down, but as I wrote, it got all
muddled, and I didn't know where I wanted to take it. When I started frowning and wondering if I
had any urgent household chores I needed to get done, I decided to live by my
own rules and stop laboring over it.
It's a little discouraging, but honestly, not everything we write in our
lives will be captivating and wonderful.
Sometimes you just have to throw it away and start over.
I'll try to come back to it again this week and write
something else, maybe on a day when I don't have children home sick and when my
taxes are done. J
I feel the same about my response, however, I disagree with you. Your post is intriguing!
ReplyDeleteHere's mine:
It never gets old. But of course, that's an oxymoron. Nothing can get old where I am. I've never forgotten the moment I realized there was food over here and how wonderful it tasted compared to anything I've ever eaten. It was strange the first time I experienced the sensation of taste and not getting full. That party and all that food was just for me.
But not today. This feast is an Assignment Feast. We all gather together and receive our assignments for the day. I say "day" very loosely. Time over here doesn't exist. That's a mortal life thing, so it's not accurate to relate events in days or weeks. But we still slip in and out of life, so we still have some kind of sense of how quickly things pass on your side.
You see, I'm dead.
Ah! Here's my assignment: "S.A. to John Kozak." S.A. stands for shoulder angel. This should be interesting. John is my wife's new boyfriend.
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I feel like this was more of me writing down an idea than getting a good start. I think it should be in third person instead of monologue, and I don't want to give away the relationship to John so soon.
SA to your widow's boyfriend ... Oh, the places this could go! I love it!
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