five words

feels a bit like i made myself jump in at the deep end here, you know. while writing the first story - stories, which by the way might turn out to be miniature three-liners, rather short or longer ones - i realised how many details do bug me intensely. i'm posting this anyway, hoping it will give me that little push which hopefully makes up for the embarrassment, which is more or less inevitable whenever you go out on a limb. so really, this is very much work in progress, a way to make me write regularly, because i'm the greatest procrastinator when it comes to that.

oh, and one more thing: i will take my pick from the five words you have given me in no particular order and credit them at the end of the story. thanks for being part of this!

//

Going back in my mind, I can see it quite clearly. We had gotten up in the wee hours, when a bird pecked on the window. The unexpectedness of that sound had startled me, I am used to the tram going past or the faint sound of the shopping trolleys of the supermarket next door clanking. There was a breeze when we stepped out, quietly, so as not to wake the others. There was a faint rain of pine needles. Where the bird had gone, I don’t know. After the hundredth tree we took a left, then a right after the next twenty-three. We came to a lake. No crystal clear waters here, greenish-brown instead, with a hint of golden specks, where the light fell through the trees. I sat on a small rock, trying to make out how long it might take me to swim to the far end of the lake. Ten minutes, fifteen? It was too cold though. We shared an apple, which i had brought in my pocket. I wondered why we had come to spend this weekend together. For some of us the need to step back from questions that seem unanswerable, for others some vague notion about going back to nature. As if we knew what that meant. For me it was the need of holding on to the familiar before the big unknown. I had initiated the change myself, but it still scared me. 'Make a move?', I whispered. We walked for another good hour, past a clearing of young birches, now almost bare. The slenderest tips of their pitch-black branches swayed. We saw some deer in the distance, heard them first, by the rustling of leaves and the crackling of small twigs underfoot. We crossed a small stream, stepping on rocks. A light drizzle had set in. We kept on walking for a good thirty-minutes. He had been looking on the ground mostly, now lifted his head a little and said ‚Call it a day?’ And it meant all kinds of things.


breeze
// golden
// whisper
// crystal
// sway
thank you, emily vanessa