Here’s your prompt for the day. This may look like an ordinary spade in an ordinary sand pile, but I think you see something more than that, don’t you? Yeah, you do. You’re a writer and, as a writer, you see a lot more than what’s pictured. You see stories!
So tell us one of them! You can put it here in the comments or at your own web site with a link back to us, please. Show us a world in these grains of sand!
(Photo Credit: manfredrichter on Pixabay)
(Any comment left on the Phantom Sway site is hereby licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License and may be used under the terms of that license or any later version of a Creative Commons Attribution License.)
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The red robed monk found me wandering the streets as a teenager. He had seen me do a small favour for a stranger and asked me why. I told him I had been raised to treat people with respect, the purse wasn’t mine so I returned it.
I accepted his offer of sanctuary, for it was Winter. I never left.
I learned many things over the years from this mystic teacher. One day, he instructed me to collect some sand. I asked him why we needed it.
“You must learn about the sands of time.”
“For that, we need sand!”
Another space full follows the first one. Then another and another.
” Do we have enough yet?” questions the man on the spade.
“We need more .” comes the reply.
Grunts and groans and myriad forms of moaning follow. If only it would stop. All the bitching and complaining in the world isn’t going to help.
” More sand…more spades…more elbow grease…just more altogether!” It is getting more frantic by the second. Huffing and puffing and shovelling ensue.
“MORE NOW!!”
Screaming and yelling is followed by silence. A silence that is broken only by the rushing water.
After all, it is spring on the Red River and sandbags don’t fill themselves.
I drop the shovel in the pile for a moment to take a quick break. “Phew,” I sigh as I wipe my brow. “All this digging is making me tired.”
“We have to keep going, we need to get it all done in time,” Steve says to me.
“No, I get it, I just…need a break.”
“No breaks, we need to get done and fast.”
“Ugh, I get it, I totally get it – but…some water and grub?”
“No.”
I know it’s important to do but digging up decaying bodies to prevent them from becoming zombies is a tedious task. Ugh.