The Red Box

Finance doesn’t really do it for me, so the prompt the red box for this week got turned into something else. This realistic stuff is more fun than I thought it would be, though I’m sure I’ll be back to dragons and spaceships soon enough. As always, there are already some  really strong entries, go read them all!

We had put the red box up high, out of reach - we thought - of curious little hands. We should have taken our cue from Pandora, and locked it away instead. The soft velvet covering was just too alluring, and the siren call of that within so tempting.

“Look mummy! Look! I’m a big girl, just like you!”

“She’s definitely your daughter,” my wife sighed.

I nodded in agreement, then reached for a weapon myself after the lipstick wielded by my wife skidded over my stubble to shrieks of appreciative laughter from our toddler.

“Doesn’t daddy look pretty too?”

Picture taken from here

Aftermath

Picture Source

Ash everywhere. Even now, days later, the reek emanating from it was palpable. Not a smell, but a taste in your throat. Ripped from our holiday we returned heartbroken. Fragments of our life survived, but it would never be the same. The vibrant green of the lotus in our wedding photo poked out, but we were charred beyond recognition. Smudged but still smiling, the fish I’d sewn for our daughter looked up at me accusingly. I turned to my wife, but her disappointment was hard to cope with. Yet again I futilely repeated my mantra “But I turned it off...”

*****

I have a feeling this will be a common take this week for the prompt from Julia's Place ...but I turned it off..., to me it’s the obvious way to go with it. With my incompetence and forgetfulness it’s a distinct possibility, and writing about it (and including personal touches, such as the lotuses in our wedding photo, and the fish I intend to make) would make my wife even more jittery. Tempting fate she would say. But seeing how I just did the altar for her last night to ward off ghosts and bad dreams (they got a nice beer and some chocolate), I should be fine.

The Traveller

A nice picture prompt this week for Julia’s 100 Words.

Giddy up!

The Traveller

Incredibly tired and hampered by the sleeting rain, he grimly pulled his cloak together, but the sodden wool provided little defence. The muddy road under his feet was quickly becoming impassable. Sighing heavily, he sat down on a log. Reaching carefully under his cloak, he gingerly felt about in various pouches and pockets, withdrawing a few items. Mumbling under his breath, he scattered some small bones on either side of the path, then he licked a feather, placing it on the fallen tree that was his seat. A flicker of green shot from his eyes and Merlin intoned “Arise, steed!”