Sacrifice

Friday Fictioneers – Sacrifice – Survival

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!

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PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

Sacrifice – Survival

The leaf-stalks, the arteries of the tree, became choked, losing their strength just as the autumn gales blew fiercer. Desiccated leaves clattered in great drifts, leaving the gnarled limbs and wrinkled bark of the tree facing the onrushing fury of winter naked, without protection. Sap sank back into the branches.

A persistent east wind hardened the cold. The tree pulled its sap back deeper, sacrificing more and more of the tightly-wrapped packets of new leaves. It was a killing winter, set to split a tree and bring it down.

Spring came late that year, and the leaves were few.

 

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The Angel of Epirus

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story 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!

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Photoprompt (c) J Hardy Carroll

The Angel of Epirus

They met in the fragrance of pine trees and the harsh smell of shattered dwellings. Hans should have killed her, but he was sick of violence. Magdalena should have screamed for the partisans; but Hans looked like her brother, dead twelve months. He looked despairing.

Shuddering, terrified, she removed her dowry necklace, pressed it into his hands.

She hissed hated German words. “Walk! Three days!” She pointed west. “Find boat. Pay man. Italy.”

Now the new buildings after the war are themselves old and in disrepair. Magdalena still feels the scars of her whipping. She still hears the whisper “Krautfucker!”