Wyl Staedtler
Jul 19th, 2007, 05:35:17 AM
A friend of mine is part of a group of creative writers who do a 'weekly prompt' challenge. Anyway, she sent me this weeks prompt and I thought it was such a neat idea that I'm forwarding it here. So have a crack at it and/or post a new prompt!
One. (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a266/lizmclellan/?action=view¤t=prompt12-stairwayto.jpg)
I.
It is a curious addition to the battlement, the staircase. It leads to the sea, perhaps into it (she can't tell because of the spitting froth), and though the brown-eyed woman puzzles over it she can come up with no explanation for the stone descent. Davy has already gone and read all manner of volumes on castles and ancient lore, did so before they left; she's never had a mind for books, really, but now she wishes she'd at least glanced at the photo captions.
A handrail has been attached of course, because it just won't do to have tourists swept into the chilly Irish Sea never to be seen again. She grips it now, a sudden crash of white foam making her dizzy; how strange, to suddenly recognize one's slightness in the face of natural force! The stone steps are wet, have been wet for centuries so that the rock is porous, but she sits anyway despite the thin cotton of her trousers. It feels safer.
What use has this little hollow - lit by a gap in the ceiling above - been? There are no entrances big enough to allow even the smallest vessel in, and it's low tide. In the far right corner, appearing intermittently as the waves lap up and down, is space enough for a human body to pass through. Not that there were a lot of casual swimmers in medieval times, she thinks. Or maybe there were. Davy would know, only he's up admiring a battered plinth because he's suddenly decided that he is A Person Interested In the Architecture of Castles.
Really, she thinks as another spray of salt wets her cheek. Might anyone have used the stairwell? It would have been a daunting experience, to walk down it's curving length with no rail to prevent a tumble into icy waters. The flight is narrow enough to dictate only a single passage; no secret rendezvous between impassioned lovers happens here (a pity, for the roaring ocean would have masked the sound of screams.)
Chyflea chan Ceudod - Foreign syllables that are mangled on her amateur tongue but which hold, she is certain, an explanation. It is hopeless to wonder at it, she won't come up with any sort of translation, and the slightly-metallic taste of frustration wells up underneath her tongue. This is supposed to be a getaway, of the reconnect-us-and-save-this-marriage sort. The count lies thusly: three arguments, two restaurant lunches eaten in silence, fourteen wrong turns, and one evening of whispered conversation that might have counted as foreplay if either had been two glasses less-drunk.
And castles. Seven of them. All vaguely the same, yet irascibly different. They race from castle to castle with astonishing efficiency. They are hunters, playing at Indiana Jones (minus the bullwhip and smiles).
"Anna?" It is Davy. His voice echoes down the chamber, just audible above the roar of the ocean. She stills, unwilling to cast a reply upwards, and there is a pause in which she imagines him looking about, mildly concerned that his wife has disappeared in the middle of nowhere.
Pants wet, she rises to clutch the rail again; for a moment Anna sways uncertainly, threatens to pitch forward over the neatly painted steel and into the green cascade. It passes, and the little gap in the stone glimmers as the water drops away from it's lip. Her hips are slim enough to swim through it, she realizes, and then she could beat Davy to the shoreline where the car sits waiting. How clever he would think her, unearthing this ancient escape route.
But she cannot swim. The woman turns away and climbs up toward the surface; her husband meets her with a bent head, points out the next site on a crumpled map purchased at the airport as they head down the cliffside. She does not ask - or tell - him about her staircase; such is the mystery of ruins.
One. (http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a266/lizmclellan/?action=view¤t=prompt12-stairwayto.jpg)
I.
It is a curious addition to the battlement, the staircase. It leads to the sea, perhaps into it (she can't tell because of the spitting froth), and though the brown-eyed woman puzzles over it she can come up with no explanation for the stone descent. Davy has already gone and read all manner of volumes on castles and ancient lore, did so before they left; she's never had a mind for books, really, but now she wishes she'd at least glanced at the photo captions.
A handrail has been attached of course, because it just won't do to have tourists swept into the chilly Irish Sea never to be seen again. She grips it now, a sudden crash of white foam making her dizzy; how strange, to suddenly recognize one's slightness in the face of natural force! The stone steps are wet, have been wet for centuries so that the rock is porous, but she sits anyway despite the thin cotton of her trousers. It feels safer.
What use has this little hollow - lit by a gap in the ceiling above - been? There are no entrances big enough to allow even the smallest vessel in, and it's low tide. In the far right corner, appearing intermittently as the waves lap up and down, is space enough for a human body to pass through. Not that there were a lot of casual swimmers in medieval times, she thinks. Or maybe there were. Davy would know, only he's up admiring a battered plinth because he's suddenly decided that he is A Person Interested In the Architecture of Castles.
Really, she thinks as another spray of salt wets her cheek. Might anyone have used the stairwell? It would have been a daunting experience, to walk down it's curving length with no rail to prevent a tumble into icy waters. The flight is narrow enough to dictate only a single passage; no secret rendezvous between impassioned lovers happens here (a pity, for the roaring ocean would have masked the sound of screams.)
Chyflea chan Ceudod - Foreign syllables that are mangled on her amateur tongue but which hold, she is certain, an explanation. It is hopeless to wonder at it, she won't come up with any sort of translation, and the slightly-metallic taste of frustration wells up underneath her tongue. This is supposed to be a getaway, of the reconnect-us-and-save-this-marriage sort. The count lies thusly: three arguments, two restaurant lunches eaten in silence, fourteen wrong turns, and one evening of whispered conversation that might have counted as foreplay if either had been two glasses less-drunk.
And castles. Seven of them. All vaguely the same, yet irascibly different. They race from castle to castle with astonishing efficiency. They are hunters, playing at Indiana Jones (minus the bullwhip and smiles).
"Anna?" It is Davy. His voice echoes down the chamber, just audible above the roar of the ocean. She stills, unwilling to cast a reply upwards, and there is a pause in which she imagines him looking about, mildly concerned that his wife has disappeared in the middle of nowhere.
Pants wet, she rises to clutch the rail again; for a moment Anna sways uncertainly, threatens to pitch forward over the neatly painted steel and into the green cascade. It passes, and the little gap in the stone glimmers as the water drops away from it's lip. Her hips are slim enough to swim through it, she realizes, and then she could beat Davy to the shoreline where the car sits waiting. How clever he would think her, unearthing this ancient escape route.
But she cannot swim. The woman turns away and climbs up toward the surface; her husband meets her with a bent head, points out the next site on a crumpled map purchased at the airport as they head down the cliffside. She does not ask - or tell - him about her staircase; such is the mystery of ruins.