On a game I play, there is a contest for short fiction under 100 words with the subject of 'Swords', I had good fun writing this and paring it down to 100 words so I thought I'd post it here :-)
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The bite of a blade against my throat awoke me with a start, eye to eye with the cold gaze of a silver-eyed assassin who smirked, pressing the blade to pierce my skin, I held her gaze as a trickle of blood snaked down my neck. "We meet again", she murmured. I nodded carefully, "I believe you have something of mine". I glanced to the sword, "ALLEZIANDRE", I commanded.
With a blur of steel and magic, the sword vanished and re-formed, held in my grasp, at her throat, she paled, I smiled, "I told you it was a special sword".
As part of my novel writing, I stopped myself starting anything else. I felt this stalled an easy departure when the going got tough on my novel, and so far - has done just that. However, watching Glastonbury recently, I had a sudden image and idea and wanted to get it down onto paper. The result being something short and well, not really sweet - but refreshing to do. It felt good to flex my writing ''muscles'' in a different setting, on a different subject and only took around 5-10 minutes to write. So I'll probably do these as inspired because other than anything else, they make nice additions here :-) Please note, it's not perfect or polished, it's a literary equivalent of a pencil sketch :-)
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Dying Sun
Voices raised in harmony, straining against the heavy beat of the drum corps heralded the setting of our dying sun.
I swayed with the crowd, my skin slick with other's sweat, my hands held high gripping a burning, wooden torch. One of hundreds held aloft in the crowd. A sea of people, defiantly clinging to the very thing we were about to lose. I watched as the sun slipped away, a final flare of reflection across the sparkling waters of the north sea, a last flash of fire then the creeping velvet of dusk and the weak glow of the rising moon.
The voices wavered, a harmony of grief eclipsing the song, the drums silent as humanity wept. One by one, the torches were extinguished. My own lay to the side, half burning in the wet grass. Comforted by the scent of wood smoke, I sat near it. My eyes closed against the sudden, intense dusk. I felt the weak heat from the desperately flickering flames.
Slowly, the singing stopped and a sharp, staccato beat began. Cracking rifles, the double roar of shotguns and the hard bang from handguns. The new harmony of our sunless world.
I heard my torch fizzle, succumbing to the weight of the wet grass, the inevitability of it's demise. I listened to the gunfire, almost melodic in this new dark world. There were no voices now, no quiet sobs. Just the near silence of people dying, crumpling to the grass like discarded dolls. The smell of death, a mist of viscera began to drift lazily across the mostly fallen crowd, mingled with acrid tang of gunsmoke, the duel scents of our dark eternity.
