200 Words

Another snippet of something that may become something else, but for now is content to be 200 Words.

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The land of the midnight sun. But not what you are thinking.

This sun, raging and pink tinged, glows continually. But there is little heat. There are no days and no nights, only this gloom of time. It is broken like the land we live in. We live on dust and the meagre seeds of hope.

This valley I gaze upon is sacred ground. And forbidden. For that is where the Fire War blazed. The last great war which shaped my future and the future of the handful of us that are left.

It is a crater now, empty and brooding, remembering its history in the pock marked landscape. The peaks at the eastern side stand proud against the broken blister sky. One day I will travel there and stand gazing up at them. I know they will be too tall for me to see the tips. They will pierce the pink like knife points in a wound.

But for now I am waiting, hoping, crouched in the red dust, chilled to the bone and listening for the heavy flap of a leather wing. The echo of yesterday’s kingdom in the silent wilderness.

Waiting for dragons and wishing for fire.

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200 Words

Occasionally I will post little snippets of writing not tied in to anything else. Simplicity can be very soothing. This is the first.

For Sale. Dozens of not so careful owners.

Every day I pass by this run down neglect of a house, held together by old bones and cobwebs. I pause, tie a shoelace that doesn’t need fastening, and wonder at the bleached timbers and the tales they could tell. I daydream about taking it on, mending the holes in the roof, mending the holes in my life.

A new limed oak floor, chintzy curtains and roses around the door. Such a pretty house people would say. I would smile, offer tea.

I research, poring over books and yellowed photographs, scribbled notes and ink on my fingers. I always want to save things, lost puppies, a battered hat, old ghosts.

There is death in the dust; last breaths lay motionless in the dirt, disturbed only by the faint filtering of sunlight and the murmur of a hangman’s noose. Murder, betrayal, hatred. Not at all chintzy.

I could paper over the deceit, sweep old blood into a pile, deposit it outside.  Paint a flower on the wall. Velvet and gilt and goose down duvets. There, all fixed.

But can I sleep with a ghost child sobbing in the hearth?

I cannot save everything.