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Wednesday, 18 April 2012

#SatSunTails.... Have No Regrets

I found the prompts for this week's #SatSunTails quite poignant - just where I'm at at the moment, thinking about life, work, balances and dreams. When I wrote the story, it was with real emotion and it must have shown because it won this this week's competition (YEAY!).

The prompts where this image and this phrase (word limit 150 words):

“my/your/their/our aging iridescent dreams”

My hope is that when I am old and sitting by a duck pond, I feel alive. Beautifully and gloriously alive. No more than that.

Have No Regrets

Sunlight on water. I throw a stone and watch it fragment, scatter into flecks of gold. Fairy treasure, I think. Or I would have thought that once. I would have seen dryads in the trees, heard whispers on the wind.

Looking down I see my mother’s hands where mine once where. Broad, capable, worn by life. Red palms, blunt nails. Caring hands, working hands. I loved my mother’s hands but I don’t love mine.

Splash.

A child’s shout breaks my reverie. He drags an old stick from the water, laughs for the sheer pleasure of it. It’s a sword in his hand; he’s a knight, a soldier.

I smile.

Dreams. Fantasies. Truth.

They don’t age, not really. I see the gold on the water once more, iridescent. It’s an enchantment cast by the Lady of the Lake. And I? I’m a sorceress. A queen.