Friday Fictioneers – Realising Perfection

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!

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Word count: 99

Realising Perfection

“To work with gemstones, you must learn how to dress them.”

Young Jason learned eagerly about cutting, cleaving and polishing.

“You must learn to assess their quality.”

He voyaged to Rotterdam and learned about colour, clarity, and flaws.

“You must learn to buy them.”

Jason toiled across desert and ocean to far-off places of the world; until he found the perfect stone.

He studied it for a month. He worked on it for a year.

Then he placed it in a beam of light and exulted in the many-coloured fire he had kindled in the crystal’s heart of ice.

My box

This Thursday’s guest poem is by Hope Owen-Gadd, my grand-daughter. It’s here because it’s the new poem that I’ve enjoyed most this week. Hope is 8 years old. I wish I could put such vivid images into my writing!

I will put in my box
The ping of a drumstick hitting a super cymbal,
A jewel of fire forest from the darkest caves,
The wool from a new born baby lamb.

I will put in my box
The gentle twinkling of a fairy’s wonderous wand,
A mouth-watering cherry pie freshly baked,
A spark from a shooting star.

I will put in my box
A bubblegum tree and a cat with wings
A parrot teaching a class,
And a teacher in the rain forest.

My box is constructed from the fossils of ammonites,
Shells, and sand, and sapphires,
With a crystal flower on the lid and love in the corners.
Its hinges are the scales of fish.

I shall hike in my box
On snow-covered rocky mountains,
Then stare into the ice cold eyes of a yeti
And rid my heart of fear.