Today’s Tuesday Tales is another picture prompt. We got to choose what photo we wanted to work with and I chose this lovely little picture here!
Beyond the Arch
One did not go past the Guardian Arch.
It was a simple enough rule. Who knew what destinies and dangers lay outside the mossy stone that guarded all? Elaine was risking her very being just by getting so close to it. It was bad enough it was daylight; she should have been resting.
“Mother says there’s nothing beyond the arch that is any different than what’s on our side,” she whispered. The sound was so gentle and delicate – another mid-day breeze. Maybe what she’d been told was true and maybe it was the sort of thing parents told their daughters to protect them. Elaine could only look so far around the bend and it seemed to be just as her mother insisted: more stone. They were the same chiseled shapes that had greeted all her ancestors.
Shadows danced and trickled over the cracks and indentations, calling to Elaine, tempting her. She could barely hear the faint footsteps receding from her He was leaving her, probably forever. I shouldn’t have hidden from him like everyone else. How long has it been since people have visited us? What was I supposed to do? He’d been with a group that had studied the walls of her village, studying it all and making strange marks on little things in their hands. She could care less about them, though. One look at him and she knew that it didn’t matter who he was and where he came from, or any of the obvious differences between them. She was his. She just had to make him believe it…if she survived crossing Guardian Arch.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she called, well knowing that everyone would hear her. With that, the restless spirit of the thousand-year-old girl took a breath and a chance and travelled under the arch.
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…because apparently I have a thing for supernatural unrequited love or something. Anyway be sure to check out all the other great Tuesday Tales!
Come Selahway With Me... 