Because it's cold and miserable outside, I'm going with something warm and lovely. Here's a picture prompt from my summer. Maybe if I stare at it long enough, I'll forget the winter weather outside.
Enjoy!
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My response:
He watched her climb the hill in the dying light. She'd managed to finish her chores before sunset, her Mama's requirement if she was going to visit him. Her amber hair, escaped from her bun, stood in wisps around her face, reflecting the light of the sun like a halo. The hem of her blue dress hung, heavy with mud, over her bare feet as she trudged up the hill. She was too old to go around without a pair of shoes anymore, but no one had told her that. Her apron had a smear of soot from the charcoal stove, and a matching spot stained her cheek. When she looked up and smiled at him, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on.
He picked up the small bouquet of wildflowers he'd gathered on his lunch break. They'd wilted, sitting too near the forge. He held them out to her, anyway, and earned another smile.
It sat in the vase alone, no other flowers or filler surrounding and suffocating it. In itself it was nothing more than a sunflower but to her it meant the world. She looked at it and remembered that day just a week ago when her entire world had been flipped upside down. He had given it to her as a promise but now she, like the flower, was completely alone. Soon the flower would be dead and wilted just like her soul, the one she had promised to him not knowing what he really was and what the flower truly meant.
ReplyDeleteShe picked it up twirling the stem in her hands and watching the yellow head spin. There had to be a way out of this arrangement, she had to prevent the inevitable from happening but how?