We sat in the village café/boulangerie with our tea, espresso and hot chocolate and wondered what we could possibly do with Rick's prompt. It wasn't easy, but I love what we each did with our ten minutes of free writing, stimulated by this photo. Two of us had no idea how they were going to end it when they started. One knew the ending but not the beginning.
Rick's Free Writ
There once was a small boy who lived near a large lake. There were no other children who lived nearby, so he played alone – skipping along the shore, tossing pebbles and watching the wave rings form and fade. Sometimes he would bring a few pieces of bread and feed the swans… if the gulls didn’t steal the morsels first.
The boy’s favorite time of day was late afternoon, just before supper, when the steamship appeared from around the bend by the old castle. Stéfan loved to watch the majestic prow of the ship with the carving of the mermaid on the front. As the ship approached the dock – about a quarter of a kilometer away (beyond where the boy was allowed to wander) – the ship’s horn would sound to alert the dock of its arrival. Stéfan would raise his arm and pull it down vigorously, as if he was the one sounding the horn. But no one was around to see him.
One day, Stéfan decided he needed a better vantage point, somewhere the captain might see him. He noticed a tall ladder leaning against the house next door and climbed to the top rung as the paddlewheeler approached. Stéfan pumped his arm, and the ship’s horn sounded, louder.
Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices. com
D-L's Free Write
The sunrise was late: 8:10.
Her cheeks felt if they were being sliced by knives instead of the northeast wind.
Her
husband had thought she was crazy selling her late parents' beach
cottage to pay an artist to sculpt the statue. "I have to," was all she
told him.
She walked to the ladder sculpture with the boy reaching for the clouds every sunrise. During the summer, she woke early with the sun. In winter she could sleep in.
The weatherman said today the temperature would fall below 0°. Clutching the coat she had brought with her, she climbed the ladder's stone steps.
The stone boy's face was her son's face. She caressed his cheek before taking her scarf and wrapping it around the stone boy's neck. She placed the coat around his shoulders. The statue's arm continued to reach toward the heavens, where his double, her son, awaited.
D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. https://.dlnelsonwriter.com
Julia's Free Write
His
childish mind saw it, but couldn’t really make any sense of it.
He stood
there on the wall butting into the lake, having wandered faster
and farther than
his grandparents.
They hadn’t
seen it yet.
In the background there were skyscrapers, but none close enough to touch or see into.
Had he been
older he might have wondered about the feat of engineering that
it had taken to
produce it.
He did wonder what the point was of having it, a useful object that is necessary for seeing the top of a roof, for leaning against something higher. But this was simply straight up, not high enough to touch the sky, not leaning pm anything-
And the boy at the top: was he real? Why a boy?
His grandparents caught up, and explained it all to him: the artist, the desired effect… Boring!
That’s when Nathan woke up. Thirty years later, as a “proper” artist, he would replicate the ladder statue in time for the inauguration of the renovated park.
Julia has written and taken photos all her life and loves syncing up with friends. Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/
Tea, espresso and hot chocolate finished we are ready to start writing as J. reaches for her her phone to set the ten minute time limit.
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