No loitering allowed here…

Finish the story begins with: 

“Where did they go? Those good old days?“, Sara sighed. She  remembers them blazing a path through the weeds to the ruins:  their playground, their castle, their love nest. Flirting as the butterflies flitted around the fallen bricks ….

Each brick invokes a memory – each memory , a brick…

” A day is a day – it’s neither Old nor young. It could be called ‘good young days’ Especially, if you are referring to a day  when we were young ” ,  He pauses his unnecessary non sequitur.

Sara’s silence encourages him to continue, “Those days just don’t become ‘good‘ because it wasn’t ‘bad‘.  It was actually quite boring at times. Loitering aimlessly in those ruins because there was nothing better to do wasn’t exactly one would call ‘good‘ “

The words of her childhood friend turned lover, turned husband, turned philosopher,turned “everything you ever say will be stamped stupid” labeller, finally sunk in.  This time she did have better things to do than loiter in the ruins.

—————— end ————————

The about 150+ word above story was in response to ‘Monday’s finish the story’ flash fiction challenge. This unique flash fiction challenge  provides  a new photo each week, and the first sentence of a story. The challenge is to finish the story using 100-150 words, not including the sentence provided. Details are available here:

https://mondaysfinishthestory.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/mondays-finish-the-story-august-10th-2015/

For other interesting takes on the same prompt click the blue frog below:

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Saturn’s rings

“He will see the caller-id and won’t pick up”, Su said.

Undaunted I pressed the call button. The rings started after a seconds pause. At the second ring Su said , like an expert in psychology, “Wanna bet?”.

The rings continued. Third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.  Su’s eyes twinkled with  a “I told ya”  yet Hope framed that black cloud of smug knowledge, like a silver lining.

The rings continued. Seventh. Eighth. My heart, an expert diver, was getting ready for the plunge.

The ringing stopped. A second later we heard a “Hello”.. that voice turns me into a poet:

“You are the Moon that never wanes

On my darkest nights”

—————- end ————–

This true ‘story’  happened two days ago when my husband, younger son and me sat in the backyard star-gazing (my husband was pixel gazing).  I said that I was going to call my older son at a summer camp 200 miles away. My little one is the “Su” in the story…the Mr. Know-it-all …who secretly misses his brother more than us.

The owner of the “Hello” is my oldest son, who is learning the art of ignoring his parents at summer school and getting quite adept at not returning our calls or texts.

Pleased after speaking to our heart’s content, we continued to star-gaze and found to our amazement that the ‘not twinkling star’ was Saturn. Googling confirmed that in August 2015 Saturn is the most visible planet on the night sky , without a telescope. With a medium telescope the site said that we could see Saturn’s rings. But we had enough ‘rings’ for that night so we continued to watch it with our naked eye ..marvelling on how we couldn’t see the neighbouring town that was 5 miles away, yet see Saturn that was around 1.2 billion kilometres away.

———————–

This 109 word story is written in response to the 100 word photo challenge  posted by Rochelle Wisoff-Field each week. PHOTO PROMPT Madison Woods.

Click on the ‘blue frog’  below to read other amazing takes, that fellow Friday Fictioneers have, on the same photo prompt:

The Muse-in-law

Elizabeth quickly closed the journal and pushed it under the embroidery.  The pen clattered to the floor and rolled under the bed.

Her mother-in-law stood at the door moments after her thunderous steps alerted Elizabeth. She instructed a maid, who followed her, to collect all the books in Elizabeth’s room.

“Books can disturb your  sensibilities and corrupt your mind…making you an unsuitable wife for my dear son…”. Her voice echoed the hollow righteousness of her mind.

Elizabeth studied the ignorant yet vile creature in front of her silently.

“…that’s why I’m banning books for you. Girls should be like flowers – delicate and pure… “, the woman continued her monologue.

“and deceptively poisonous? like you?“, Elizabeth wanted to say when inspiration struck her.

“Thank you”, Elizabeth blurted ,interrupting and dismissing her mother-in-law.

When she was left alone eventually , Elizabeth started writing the perfect plot twist for her play: “The team employed the use of Nightshade to get the information they wanted from their captive.”

———– end —————-

Nightshade – is a type of plant where the flowers, steams and leaves are poisonous like the flower shown in the picture prompt.

I also drew inspiration from the first woman to write an English play and publish it in her name: Elizabeth Cary  or Lady Falkland. More information on her is available in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cary,_Viscountess_Falkland

Excerpts from the wikipedia article that acted as a basis for my piece:

“At the age of fifteen, her father arranged her marriage to Sir Henry Cary, later made Viscount Falkland, who married her because she was an heiress. When she finally moved into her husbands home, her mother-in-law informed Elizabeth that she was forbidden to read, so Elizabeth instead chose to write poetry in her spare time.”

Elizabeth turned her mother-in-law’s ban of books  into a muse to create her own written material….

“ Her first play The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry (1613) was written in iambic pentameter ….. The Tragedy of Mariam was progressive for its time because it was the first English play to be written by a woman.^[4] Her social commentary discussed divorce and female agency, which was innovative for the time. The play discusses revenge, scheming, and plotting as core elements which all aid in Falkland’s critique about patriarchal tyranny.”

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The about 150+ word above story was in response to ‘Monday’s finish the story’ flash fiction challenge. This unique flash fiction challenge  provides  a new photo each week, and the first sentence of a story.This time I used the first sentence (in Italics) provided at the end. The challenge is to finish the story using 100-150 words, not including the sentence provided. Details are available here:

https://mondaysfinishthestory.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/mondays-finish-the-story-august-3rd-2015/