Flash Fiction / writing prompts

The Summoning Begins

Chris Hall67 Comments

The hunters advance further into the foothills of the purple mountains. Despite Aquilla’s reassuring presence, Owab remains downcast. He cannot pretend that his failure to forestall the lioness’ attack on the elder hasn’t weakened the group’s chances of success in their search for the Rain Bull.

As night falls, the hunters light a fire on a shelf-like outcrop of rock and wait as the quarter moon rises in the velvet sky to align with Orion’s three she-tortoises. Each throws a handful of scented herbs into the flickering flames.

Aquilla cries out;
they gather around the fire
and prepare to dance.

Previous episodes of this little African adventure are here.

Photo credit: researchgate.net

Written in response to two challenges:

– Di of Pensitivity101‘s Wednesday’s Three Things Challenge – PRETEND, SHELF, TALL
– Denise Farley of GirlieOnTheEdge‘s Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt – QUARTER

I also set myself the additional challenges of confining my piece to 100 words exactly and writing in the haibun form. Just for fun!

Click here for more Six Sentence Stories – or bring one of your own to the party!

67 thoughts on “The Summoning Begins”

  10. Outstanding ‘visuals’.
    That final little poem/haiku-thing (at the end of each Six) is really kinda cool…somehow, has effect of lifting us (the Readers) a bit above the narrative for a promise or hint or threat of something ahead.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. They continue on despite the hardship! I like the aligning of the moon and constellation to bring about a sacred dance before the flames. Another good episode, Chris.
    The format you are using is as vital as the surroundings and mystical elements. In the children’s stories Rupert Bear you would typically have images and a stream of narration, yet beneath each image was the addition of a rhyme to ‘illustrate’ the illustration – always loved that clever touch.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  18. You say so much in so few words, Chris, and within the disciplines you choose to follow. And they’re never obvious. Such good writing. I can see what’s happening here so clearly.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a reply - I'd love to hear from you.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.