Rachel walked the rectangles of water, hoping to find a cure for old age. The featureless shallows surrounded by stark rock symbolised her brain. Lost memories and hardened blood vessels. If only she could see her reflection in these pools, her emptiness would vanish along with her wrinkles.
Today, Rachel’s face seemed closer to the water than ever, her spine bent double where the landscape had leached the minerals from her bones. For a second, in the white sun, she glimpsed a mirrored child, before walking over the edge and tumbling into the pools below along with her recaptured memory.
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A big thank you Rochelle Wisoff for this weeks photo prompt. This is my first contribution to Friday Fictioneers, a story of exactly 100 words in length. To find out how you can join in with the weekly flash fiction challenge and to read other people’s stories to go with the image above, do visit Rochelle’s blog.
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Sarah Potter Writes 
WOW.. what images you draw with your words.. c
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Thanks, Cecilia 🙂
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Sarah,
What a lovely scene and story you have crafted here. There is so much imagery and so much feeling packed into so few words. The ending really resonated with me, that phrase “recaptured memories.”
Anne
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Thank you so much, Anne, for your kind comments. I enjoy writing haiku, which is a good discipline for learning to pack a great deal into a few words.
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This is very melancholy but warmly written with hope.
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My writing is quite often melancholy but interlaced with hope. I know I have difficulty reading or writing relentlessly sad novels, as one invests so much time in the characters and it’s too draining for everything to go downhill and end in a swamp of negativity.
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I tend to write the same. Sadness tainted with hope always finds a way into my writing.
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powerful & well written!
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Thank you, Cindy 🙂
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A great photo Sarah and great writing! One day I hope I produce something as good as this!
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Thank you so much, blondeusk. You really cheered me up with your comment, although I think your writing is very good. It’s just that we’re not always the best critic of our own work.
Why don’t you have a go at penning a 100-word story for Friday Fictioneers? There’s a new photo prompt posted on the site every week (I think on a Wednesday). The picture in my post wasn’t mine; I agree it’s a great photo.
I’ve been so busy editing and waiting on literary agents to respond, I’ve not written any prose for the last 4 months, so this weekly flash-fiction exercise is just the medicine I need to remind me I can still write.
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I like how the old woman and the landscape are connected even before she ‘tumbles’. Your story brings out the inevitability of old age, and our stubbornness in denying and resisting old age. An engaging story.
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Oh, yes, that inevitability. I think that medicine has enabled people to live so much longer but it has also given many of them false expectations of how much can be done to hold back age. There is this attitude that they are the consumers and the doctors the providers.
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Dear Sarah,
Welcome to the party, pal. Interesting take on the prompt.
Aloha,
Doug
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Thank you, Doug. I’m very glad to have joined the party and will get to reading all the stories for this week’s prompt at the first opportunity.
All the best
Sarah
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Dear Sarah,
Welcome to Friday Fictioneers. It’s a little like The Hotel California, you can check out anytime you want but you can never leave. Habit forming.
Well done story. I look forward to reading more from you.
shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle
Thank you for your welcome. I’ve really enjoyed participating this week and can see how it’s habit forming. I’m glad you liked my story.
All the best
Sarah
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Lost memories and hardened blood vessels. What a lovely line … Welcome to our little ship of fools.
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Thank you. I’m touched with what a lovely welcome everybody is giving me and such kind words about my writing, too. Glad to have climbed on board.
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Hi Sarah, your writing is beautiful; so many magical metaphors.
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Thank you so much for your lovely comment 🙂
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I didn’t breathe while reading this. A wonderful piece.
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Oh, Jean. Thank you, so much. I’ve never had anyone tell me my writing had stopped them breathing. Perhaps, if I get my novel published, it had better come with a health warning “remember to breathe while reading this”. Come to think of it, this might explain why there’s a long silence from a couple of literary agents I’ve submitted my work to. Perhaps I’ve killed them off!
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You made me laugh so much, it’s set the dogs barking two floors down!
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Sarah, Welcome to Friday Fictioneers! Good story with great description. I especially liked how she saw a child in her reflection just before she died. Well written. 🙂 —Susan
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Thank you, Susan, for your welcome and for your kind words about my story 🙂
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I really like how you blend the landscape with ideas of her inner life, plus the fact that, although the story is sad, it does represent fulfilment of sorts, since at the end “her emptiness would vanish along with her wrinkles.”
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Thank you, Blake for your thoughtful comment.
I believe that people very much become a part of their landscape or maybe cityscape if they’ve lived in an area for most of their lives: it’s all that shared history inexorably linking them to the place.
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Beautifully lyrical and with a message about the acceptance of age – I love what you ‘saw’ in this image.
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Thank you, Andrea 🙂
I think the worst thing about old age is seeing your life shrinking fast and not having time, or maybe the strength and energy left to do all the things you want to do. But that is still better than being so utterly defeated by old age or disability that you are just sitting waiting to die. At least the old woman in my story was still getting up out of her chair everyday, searching for answers, even if it did kill her.
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