{original fiction} stare square into the sun
Title: Stare Square into the Sun
Prompt: 037. Lonely Road
Rating: K
Character(s): Silas
Word Count: 219
Warnings: mention of alcohol
Summary: A short writing exercise in distraction.
- - - - -
With a pilfered bottle of hard liquor bundled securely under one arm and four apples bound in mesh and clutched beneath the other, Silas shifted his attention to the west, to the sun sagging listlessly beyond the horizon, to the dust whipping beneath his feet in the wake of creaking wagons and their restless owners hurrying, scurrying home, all to the east, as if fearful of being swallowed beneath the rapidly advancing banner of twilight.
“Dusty dusk, dusky dust,” he intoned, an inner mantra that steeled him to the west, to the unknown, one man as an island in the tin sea swell of huffing men and chattering women and snorting oxen that sought, as if yoked one and the same by some base instinct, the sanctuary of safe harbor and the eastern hearth. Silas strained to withstand the pull of the tide, flexed muscles to resist the ripping current-the din of the tidal crest roared in his ears, crashed on all sides, threatened to overpower, and finally abandoned him in a wash of swill on the shore, leaving naught but a deserted road and the resilient dust of the West clouding his vision and clinging to obscure the shine of the apples. And so Silas planted the first blind step west, alone, on this dusty dusk road.
Prompt: 037. Lonely Road
Rating: K
Character(s): Silas
Word Count: 219
Warnings: mention of alcohol
Summary: A short writing exercise in distraction.
- - - - -
With a pilfered bottle of hard liquor bundled securely under one arm and four apples bound in mesh and clutched beneath the other, Silas shifted his attention to the west, to the sun sagging listlessly beyond the horizon, to the dust whipping beneath his feet in the wake of creaking wagons and their restless owners hurrying, scurrying home, all to the east, as if fearful of being swallowed beneath the rapidly advancing banner of twilight.
“Dusty dusk, dusky dust,” he intoned, an inner mantra that steeled him to the west, to the unknown, one man as an island in the tin sea swell of huffing men and chattering women and snorting oxen that sought, as if yoked one and the same by some base instinct, the sanctuary of safe harbor and the eastern hearth. Silas strained to withstand the pull of the tide, flexed muscles to resist the ripping current-the din of the tidal crest roared in his ears, crashed on all sides, threatened to overpower, and finally abandoned him in a wash of swill on the shore, leaving naught but a deserted road and the resilient dust of the West clouding his vision and clinging to obscure the shine of the apples. And so Silas planted the first blind step west, alone, on this dusty dusk road.