As the water receded we waited in that serene place, silently waiting for our voyage. I was twenty-one and it was my turn to journey through and discover something new. We were still rebuilding then, although it had been decades, but we were getting slowly better at retrieval.
“I discovered nothing, I got too overwhelmed,” my Dad told me while we packed. His debriefing had helped inform my training.
“I buried some books, but they didn’t survive,” my Mother added as I helped her bake journey snacks. We had since learned to preserve. And commit to memory.
I stepped forward, my training filling my mind as my breath caught in my chest and my heart thumped as I walked alone across the wet mud, the sucking sound urging me one. As I passed under the ancient wood all sense of time and place was sucked away quickly and I found myself in an orchard of a fruit I didn’t recognise.
I checked the stars, scanned the horizons, felt the earth. Then buried fruit pits in a metal box under a rock.
Weeks later and years in the future I returned. This is why I love cherries so much.
Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt. In the previous 18 weeks (or Sols), we were to add one of two elements (though sometimes I did both) - a Fire Element or an Ice Element. This time, we had a bit more choice! Alongside a word count of less than 200 words, with no minimum, we were to include one or more of the following:
1. Write your story in a genre that’s different from your default (you decide what that means to you)
2. Include a mythological character or non-Earth world
3. Incorporate a favorite fire or ice dragon challenge from Sol 1 – 18
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