A picture says a thousand words. Write them.
Mission: Write a
story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about
this picture. Write something about this picture.
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tag writeworld in your block!
http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/75801850837/writers-block-this-image-is-part-of-a-series-on
Seelie wood
The figure on the path wore a long dark
top with a hood that covered his head. In the dim light he couldn’t tell if it
was black or a dark navy. As he got closer to the unmoving figure he thought it
might actually be a cloak. An old fashioned kind of one that looked as if he
had picked it up at some vintage clothing store.
A few more steps and the guy heard him
approach and peered out the side of the hood at him. He saw a ginger beard,
pale skin and piercing blue eyes. The eyes flicked down to his feet and back up
and then he could have sworn that the cloak went out of focus and then changed
into a more modern looking anorak.
He almost missed a step; his walk
faltered a little. He must be imagining things. More tired than he thought he
was.
“You okay?” the stranger asked.
“Ah... yeah.” He paused. “Did your
cloak just change?”
“No. How would it do that?”
“I don’t know. It’s your cloak.”
“It’s not a cloak.”
“Not now... but it was before. I
saw it.” It used to drag on the ground, he was sure of it.
The guy just stared at him.
“Well,” he said. “I should get going.”
He wasn’t sure why he bothered to tell him that; a stranger in the woods.
He started walking. After a few steps,
he realised the man was following him.
As a largish physically fit man he had
never been concerned about someone following him before. His female friends
talked about it all the time. How they were so worried about where a guy was on
the street when they were walking. They would cross sides; walk on the other
pavement, stop and go back if they had to, to make sure that a man was not
tracking them. But he was in the middle of the forest, on a snowy track used as
a cut through. He couldn’t cross the road.
He kept walking. Now very mindful of
the other keeping pace with him.
They went for some distance before it
got too much for him. He spun on his heel and faced the man. “STOP following
me!”
The man just laughed at him.
“Stop it!”
“Am I frightening you?”
A wave of tiredness washed over him. He
had had a rough couple of weeks. He put up his hand to wipe at his eyes and
when he looked again, the guy was closer. He hadn’t seen him move. “How did
you...?”
“I didn’t do anything.” His voice
seemed strangely comforting. Hypnotic.
“Y-you... moved.”
He moved again; in a fast blur. Now he
was right in front of him. He tried to step back, he really did, but he could
only look at those very very blue eyes.
The man was tall; as tall as he was and
he was pushing six foot five. With a head tilt, the guy gave him the once over.
He felt like a specimen being studied. A hand lifted and squeezed his bicep and
then the trespasser made a pleased humming noise.
“I n-need to go,” he managed to say.
“Go where?”
“Home.”
“Me, too.” Another head tilt. “Would
you like to come with me.”
“I d-don’t do guys. N-no offense.”
A moue of disappointment. “Are you
sure?”
“Yes?”
Another chuckle. “You don’t sound
sure.”
“I ...” he stopped talking. Those eyes
got to him again. He clutched harder at his backpack strap.
The redhead flipped his hood back,
leaned in and kissed him.
He tasted divine. Sweet and fragrant
and he found himself leaning into the kiss. But he had never kissed a man
before and the facial hair brushing against his skin felt odd.
“Do you have anyone at home?” the man
asked him as he brushed down the side of his face with his fingers.
He just shook his head. Life for him
was single, living alone and his family were all gone or out of his life. He
got a smile for that and another press of his arm.
He wanted to kiss him again. He leaned
in and got another taste. And another smile.
A hand lifted and took the bag from his
shoulder. He slung it across his own and reached down to grab his hand;
gripping it firmly. They started to walk. As they did, the redhead lifted their
joined hands to his mouth and kissed his knuckles.
“What are you?” he asked him because he
knew he wasn’t human.
“Fae. The good kind,” he added.
He nodded. “The seelie wood.” That was
the old name for the forest he walked through. And Seelie was another name for
the good fae, he vaguely remembered. Unseelie were the kind you hoped not to
meet.
“Yes.”
“So it was a cloak?”
“Yes... and you could see me.
Most people cannot.”
“Huh.” A pause. “So I’m-” He stopped.
He didn’t know what he was. A lot of what he thought about himself had been
altered in the last few minutes.
“You are special. You have the Sight.”
“I’ve been having bad dreams,” he
confessed.
“You do look tired.”
They had left the path. The trees in
front of them seemed to shift to allow them through. They walked a path he had
not noticed before because he would swear it hadn’t been there before.
“You need to rest. But when you do, you
must tell me any dreams you have.”
“Okay. Do I sleep with you?”
“If you’d like.”
They stopped in front of a snow covered
mound that seemed to glow from within.
“Hold tight, now,” he was instructed. A
spoken word in a lilting speech and an open doorway shimmered into existence in
the side of the mound. He shut his eyes against the sudden brightness.
A tug on his hand and he stepped
forward.
~~~~
© AM Gray 2014
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