100 Words: Returning

After years away we returned.  After decades, in fact, we were finally allowed to go back to where we 

had once lived.  Before.

Everyone had something, at least one thing, they wanted still to be there.  

The thing that they would make a beeline for, that had been dreamed about during the time away 

as we waited for home to be declared safe.

For me it was the view.  To just be able to sit once more with tea, a biscuit, another person and just 

watch and talk and talk and watch as the world drifts on happily.

Pure bliss.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

100 Words: Where will the cycle of vengeance end?

Finding her stolen eggs at last, the dragon razed the funfair and began the long and arduous task of returning each of her possible future children.

From the ashes came a girl, almost a woman, swearing revenge as she watched the dragon return from the east time and again; and who made a careful count of how long it took.

The girl, now a woman, arrived at the nest, a baby strapped to her, to find a dragon dejected, almost unto death, scores of unhatched eggs around her.

Something in the dragon’s eyes changed her mission.  And she asked, “How?”

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

100 Words: Under Protection

She would pass through the forest often, never noticing how the trees would turn ever so slightly to keep a watchful eye.  For they knew who she was and who she would become.  

But they weren’t the only ones.

Often the trees would spy dark wizards in search of her and, one day, when they got too close, revealed themselves by quickly growing a shield of trees and vines to hide her.

“Hello?” she asked, trembling a little.

She received no answer but knew instinctively that she was under protection here.

And, little by little, she began to discover magic.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

100 Words: Stairway to Heaven

I’m told stairs come down from heaven onto a beach where my grandfather used to run everyday.  He was always astonished by the change in light, how no one ever seemed to use the steps and that, when there, he held no desire to climb them.  That only came at home, on the occasions when he suddenly remembered that strange place.

Father always maintained his parents met there, though.  That they had a whirlwind romance before they both disappeared, leaving him behind.

All the older relatives swear it's true.  Whatever the truth, I’ve seen stones that tell a different story.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © CEAyr

100 Words: Everyone left behind, Everyone who helped

I take another set of boxes and wheel them to their new home in the Archives of Everything.  Recently they seem to have been getting heavier somehow.  Perhaps because there have been so many this last year.  Even in another dimension, this takes its toll.  We might not be dealing with the bodies, like the Corpselarks, but these facsimiles of lives lost, gathered by the Compilers, they show you something else.

I saw a photo of a dying man, a woman he didn’t know by his side.  Together they sat in a perfect, comfortable silence.  As peaceful as a hug.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

100 Words: What was it?

Not much left of old days.

Have to guess what was it for.

High in trees we heard first, moaning for help we thought.

People of old so strange moving up high in the trees with special path.  Also stupid.  Dangerous with no hand rails, so many gaps between stepping pieces.  Iron trip hazards holding together.  Rope bridge better.

Dismantled it for wood first.  Metal harder, later.  When need.

Got back.  Told of trains.  So mysterious people of old days.

The story?  Good to look at, work out, see in mind.  Good, too, to ask elders, to find out more.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas

100 Words: Changing Times

I remember the days we were trusted to not steal the toilet paper (and to change it even).  But everything has changed.  

I have used this rail line all my life.  Since the old days of curtains and before blue lights.  

The first time I caught the train, I was so excited I nearly wet myself, holding it in because I didn’t want to miss anything.  When they began to fill the water tank, mine reached critical level and I rushed to the toilet.  It’s often been my first port of call ever since.  Sad to see how it’s changed.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Trish Nankivell