250 Words: Couple No 2: Couple in the hospital courtyards

In the hospital’s courtyards a reception is in progress.  Guests circulate, drinks in hand, and chat idly, gossip or talk business.  Among them a couple keep apart to stay together.  They keep to opposing courtyards, separated by people and cloisters.  Despite their separation, at moments it is like only they are there.  

One sits alone on a bench peeking through the columns and guests to see the other who, as guest of honour, is almost constantly engulfed with requests for information of various kinds and, as such, can only manage a fleeting glance back.  Every so often, though, their eyes meet and each feels an electric shiver.

At times, without the other in sight, they remember that more than space separates them: theirs is a love that cannot be expressed in public: the heat generated in private (and those electric shivers) makes them too scared to approach one another at this and other events.  The wrong time, the wrong place is their curse and their fear. 

Still, later that day they know that, by gaslight, they can do whatever they please so long as the guest of honour’s wife does not detain him.  She is an ever-present thorn in their side.  A family friend he had been driven towards since childhood, they often call her the cold stone and laugh before lighting up a second cigarette.  Each moment alone is precious, every kiss, every touch.  Any act that cannot be performed in those courtyards for fear of their love’s discovery.

250 Words: Couple No 1: Couple at the coast

I see them every day and the same unanswered questions whirl about my head.  Why are they out there and what do they seek to achieve?  I come here to be alone: just me and the sound of the sea but why are they here out on that platform?  I know the answer is clear and obvious, the question futile- maybe infantile, even, like, Do they come alive at night?- yet I think it every day.

More pressing are my other questions.  If they are A Couple and not just a couple, then why do they stand apart?  Why do they not hold hands as I do when I’m here with my husband?  What has come between them to form the space in between them?  What do they say to one another, if indeed they are on speaking terms?  Sometimes I think I would give anything in order to be able to go and find out.  Alas, however, I cannot.  No matter how many days I come and sit on the sand, their secrets will never be given up to me.

Occasionally I think that perhaps, after all, they are just a couple of people, unconnected except by the platform they share, that I shouldn’t concern myself: they are just art at the end of the day.  But then I return and think- no- they are each still all the other has in the world- why shouldn’t they be more?  Why shouldn’t I question and hope that there is Hope?

250 Words: The President reflecting afterwards

The President thought about the good he had done for his country- its rescue from oppressors who ruled before him and its unification being just the start.  Every year of his rule, Brihalbus had taken the country further forward, further away from the tyranny of before and closer to the country of his vision.

He was a man who had come from nowhere to lead.  Just an ordinary man who had ascended from nothing to be chosen by the people to alter the ways of the past.  Power that had been entrusted and bestowed in him.  And it was for him to decide the method.  For him to decide the direction.  And no one could change that.

Except maybe one person. 

The President looked up at the sun and reflected on how it saw everything- even at night its light reflects and keeps watch.  Only once a month did man gain a guaranteed, and brief, rest from its watchful eye.  He spoke to her often, discussing his plans past, present and future.  She never responded, only listened.  But like no one else listened.  She heard his words with care and reverence.  Not with the barely disguised fear inherent in others.  No, she was his companion, his confidant.  But- sometimes- his judge.

He looked quickly away from the sun: to the clouds, to the sky- anywhere but to see what he had done.  Sometimes it got too much.  But always he thought of the good.  The good that pulled him through.

250 Words: Little goblin at the battle’s end

Following the defeat of the Overearthers, the little goblin ran under the ever-extending shadow toward the area where the Goblin Infantry had fought.  He charged, in fact, down the slope, faster and faster until he lost his balance and tumbled down instead, springing up at the bottom to run forward through scores of dead and dying bodies, the latter crying out in pain or for their mothers, all issuing a final prayer for themselves and their loved ones back home soon to be living under the shadow.

He skipped over limbs and heads and other body parts that littered the battlefield alongside the being they had once been a part of.  Before too long the little goblin found his switcheroo friend face down, a dagger in hand that he’d taken from his boot after giving up on the sword that he had swapped his bow and arrows for.  It had served him alright, the dagger, slitting a throat or two and finding a gap in the ribs of the thing that slew him.

The little goblin turned his friend over to see a look of fear- the eyes seeming to focus on something distant and horrible.  The little goblin shivered and closed the lids.  Then he started to cry- just a small stream at first rolling down his cheeks.  Then his shoulders shuddered and he broke down, holding his friend’s body and whispering a thousand apologies until a scaly claw gripped his shoulder and the little goblin’s new life began.

250 Words: Little goblin at the start of battle

In the very first volley the little goblin saw the problem.  The arrows of his fellow goblin archers quickly used their inherited magical properties, turning to spears or bolts or harpoons; while some set on fire mid-journey and others became stone or molten rocks shortly before making contact.  His- or rather those of his friend did not.

Suddenly scared again the goblin glanced far below him to the ranks of the goblin infantry and saw many goblins swinging their swords like they were children with sticks- one poor soul however was left on the start line, his sword too heavy to lift.  Clearly doomed, the goblin was praying furiously for it to shift.

Maybe someone had told him this would happen, perhaps it had only been alluded to.  Either way the little goblin was sure he should have known about this, or that he and his cohort should have been more honest in their reasons for suddenly joining units so late on.  All he knew for sure was that a nasty sense of foreboding was filling him up.

He wanted to take action, and thought about trying to get forward and put things right but there were too many goblins in between and surely too much ground to cover.  And, anyway, to break ranks would surely end with an arrow lodged in the back of his head.

All he could do was carry on with his task in the full knowledge that his little switcheroo had cost someone their life.

250 Words: Little goblin before the battle

The chants and drums of both sides tied a knot in the little goblin’s stomach and he began to feel sick.  The sound reverberated back and forth filling and scaring the minds of all those too nervous to take part, the out of sync drums only adding to the sense of unease.

The scene of the opposition was what scared the little goblin most, though.  A ghastly array of creatures from the underearth all lined up, full of fire and bile; the sort of which he could only imagine producing.  He was ultimately a good natured creature who rarely lost his temper and was sure he would not be able to bring out the sort of bloodlust required to fight hand to hand.  Hence he had been so pleased to switch places and wind up some distance away with his bows and arrows.

Before long, however, the little goblin’s hands started to shake and he began to wonder how he would fire the arrows waiting in their quiver.  Alone with his thoughts he started to wish for the start of proceedings to give him something else to concentrate on.  The wait had gotten too much by far- he needed the whistle to still his hands, his bow and arrow to occupy them, and his eyes to stop taking in the whole scene and see only a point in the distance within the army opposite.

Finally it did and the little goblin reached for and loosed his first arrow in anger.

250 Words: Little goblin preparing for war

Once across The Sleeve, the little goblin didn’t have to travel far to find the resisting armies.  All along the coast were camps full of all kinds of creatures training to stop and drive back the Dark Warrior’s armies to whatever crack in the earth they had crawled out from.

In one such camp the little goblin was supposed to be learning to use his sword but, as he could barely lift it, using it to fight was an impossibility.  He knew it was supposed to alter once in battle, to grow lighter, and sharpen itself, but the little goblin could not see the point of this if he had not gained enough training to be able to use it properly- to attack and defend like his comrades were learning.

Elsewhere another young, but taller and much stronger, goblin was struggling with the bow and arrow his elders had sent him forward with.  The whole procedure was too fiddly for his great carrot-sized fingers and he longed for a weapon to grip and swing.

The two met in the dining area, starting to chat idly as they did every night with a different goblin.  This time, though, when they spoke of their dissatisfaction with their weapons, a plan of switcheroo was the swift and logical conclusion.

And so the pair carried on in one another’s places, each pleasing their new instructors with their superior abilities.  And they themselves felt better prepared for their war against the coming danger of darkness.