Friday Fictioneers – White Nancy

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz (the blue frog) on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

FF - Realising perfection (icicles) 171206

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Word count: 99

Sorry, folks! I’ve been greedy this week and posted two stories.

White Nancy

The chill I feel isn’t just from the frost, nor even from the wind-chill. Prone on my sledge, I’m peering down from the summit of White Nancy. Tracks like scars in the snow disappear into the blackness of the night. There’s a drystone wall down there, with a snow bridge over it. Tilley lamps gleam either side of the bridge. They mark its location but are too dim to show anything else. I will have to steer between the two, and then fly like a ski-jumper.

“Get a move on!”

“Chicken!” whispers Steve.

I brace myself and push off.

53 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – White Nancy”

  3. What did the narrator do? Skiing? Well it does not really matter. It matters, if the situation was really high risky or not. And this is again a very individual evaluation. From Sports I learnd, that most of the time, I have just to overcome my fear and will have more success. But this depends if you are more scary or already a hot rock. My son for example is very careful all the time, there I always knew to tell him, go ahead you can do it. He quasi never had injuries. My daughter was always a hot rock. I fished her several times out of the pool, because she just jumped in at the moment she could walk. I knew that I could not let her go to primary by bike alone the first year, because she does not look for cars….she never really recognize danger and has no fear…well I do not know how often I have been in hospital with her…..so everything depends on people..most of the time, or?

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  9. Oh, I foresee bad things. Love that idea of a snow bridge over the drystone wall – we had one of those when I was growing up in Derbyshire, a drift of snow so huge it compacted over the wall and the kids used it for sledging. Terrifying really. Lovely tale Penny

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    • Dear Anna
      Thank you for reading and commenting.
      White Nancy is a structure at the top of Kerridge Hill, overlooking Bollington in Cheshire UK. Children used to toboggan there during the sixties – whether they still do, I don’t know!
      Thank you for your kind words – I’m glad the sense of trepidation came across.
      With best wishes
      Penny

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    • Dear Alicia
      Thank you for reading and commenting. How sweet of you to exclaim over the ‘tracks like scars in the snow’. I’m really pleased with this story because it seems to have stirred so many happy memories in readers!
      With best wishes
      Penny

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    • they do, they fly.
      Because there are still areas where you trust your feelings and live with your nature and because there are still parents who know that you can not rob your children of their own experiences (whether positive or negative). Life is dangerous and of course you should not expose yourself to high risks. This also means that one should defend against genetically modified peanuts. But tobogganing belongs really to the life of a child, like falling with a bicycle and breaking an arm.

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    • Dear Christine
      Thank you for reading and commenting.
      I hope very much that children still toboggan. It’s such fun, and doesn’t have to be lethally dangerous (I wouldn’t have let my kids down White Nancy, I must admit!)
      With best wishes
      Penny

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