Brigit's Flame August 2014 Challenge (Week One) - Put Breath in You
Title: Put Breath in You
Author: Florence A. Watson
Written for: Brigit's Flame Challenge August 2014 (week one)
Main Prompt: Bones
Secondary Prompt: Ezekiel 37, 4-6
Length: 523 words
Author's Note: This is intended as one scene within a longer story which I am still in process of writing.
Lucy had completely lost track of the time and been praying so long she felt stiff as she rose. Her back ached and she could feel the bones in her neck crackle slightly as she tried to work the kinks out. God only knew how long she had knelt there, trying fruitlessly to find some sense of solace. The chime of the clock in the church tower had finally roused her to the realisation the church had grown dim since she entered. It must be tea-time at least.
Always when she came to church she visited the plaque in the south aisle commemorating those young men who had fallen in the last war; by habit now Lucy made her way there, and stood few seconds reading the names she knew all too well. The fingers of her right hand lightly traced the name of her brother. They had never recovered his body from the battlefield; she had no memory of him dead - only the image in her mind's eye of how confident and determined he had looked the day he returned wearing the King’s uniform. Just so, Laurie had looked today. Neither brother nor son ever dreamed of shirking what they saw as their duty. What had come of Raymond’s sacrifice, though: killed in the War to End All Wars, so she could now give her son to another.
Automatically, as she turned to leave, Lucy bent to pick up a bible that had fallen from the shelf of a pew. The book had opened to Ezekiel; she had never been very fond of the Old Testament, and within it, this chapter was certainly no favourite. One passage stood out though:
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
There was an ironic twist to Lucy’s mouth. She had given birth to Laurie; she had raised him with precious little help from his layabout father. Yet now in some now arbitrary twist of destiny God decided her son belonged to him, and disposed of him without any consultation with the mother who had loved and nurtured and sacrificed. A little voice deep inside Lucy whispered ‘blasphemy’. She refused to heed it. ‘It’s a just war, this time,’ consoled another voice. ‘Hitler must be stopped.’ She ignored that too. They could stop Hitler without her son; she knew they could. He was just one man of thousands to the army; he was the only child to her. He was....
He was no child. Could she want him to be less than he was? She had raised him to do his duty. Lucy straightened her back and raised her chin as she walked resolutely down the aisle toward the church door. She must ask the vicar if he was planning a farewell service for the young men from the village who had joined up.
Author: Florence A. Watson
Written for: Brigit's Flame Challenge August 2014 (week one)
Main Prompt: Bones
Secondary Prompt: Ezekiel 37, 4-6
Length: 523 words
Author's Note: This is intended as one scene within a longer story which I am still in process of writing.
Lucy had completely lost track of the time and been praying so long she felt stiff as she rose. Her back ached and she could feel the bones in her neck crackle slightly as she tried to work the kinks out. God only knew how long she had knelt there, trying fruitlessly to find some sense of solace. The chime of the clock in the church tower had finally roused her to the realisation the church had grown dim since she entered. It must be tea-time at least.
Always when she came to church she visited the plaque in the south aisle commemorating those young men who had fallen in the last war; by habit now Lucy made her way there, and stood few seconds reading the names she knew all too well. The fingers of her right hand lightly traced the name of her brother. They had never recovered his body from the battlefield; she had no memory of him dead - only the image in her mind's eye of how confident and determined he had looked the day he returned wearing the King’s uniform. Just so, Laurie had looked today. Neither brother nor son ever dreamed of shirking what they saw as their duty. What had come of Raymond’s sacrifice, though: killed in the War to End All Wars, so she could now give her son to another.
Automatically, as she turned to leave, Lucy bent to pick up a bible that had fallen from the shelf of a pew. The book had opened to Ezekiel; she had never been very fond of the Old Testament, and within it, this chapter was certainly no favourite. One passage stood out though:
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
There was an ironic twist to Lucy’s mouth. She had given birth to Laurie; she had raised him with precious little help from his layabout father. Yet now in some now arbitrary twist of destiny God decided her son belonged to him, and disposed of him without any consultation with the mother who had loved and nurtured and sacrificed. A little voice deep inside Lucy whispered ‘blasphemy’. She refused to heed it. ‘It’s a just war, this time,’ consoled another voice. ‘Hitler must be stopped.’ She ignored that too. They could stop Hitler without her son; she knew they could. He was just one man of thousands to the army; he was the only child to her. He was....
He was no child. Could she want him to be less than he was? She had raised him to do his duty. Lucy straightened her back and raised her chin as she walked resolutely down the aisle toward the church door. She must ask the vicar if he was planning a farewell service for the young men from the village who had joined up.