The challenge? Write a story in exactly 6 sentences based on Denise’s one word prompt: PLATFORM. Visit, comment, and write & perhaps post your own on SIX SENTENCE STORIES. The Café is open. Come as you are!

It’s too hot to stay aground, too hot to listen to them natter and fight over nothing of real importance.                   

At least, not to my view of things: steady breeze blowing, cold indigo lake, a flutter of waves, enough roll to bounce an inner tube and splash its passenger (Um yeah, that’d be me), dock warm enough, towel soft right-sized enough to provide refuge, day stretching long enough to forget people things for Nature’s siren song.

Only they have tight plans for the day, have to get out on that boat, scrub the toe rails, pack everything in their appointed cubbies, set sail, anchor out for days in several planned harbors, but we’re behind schedule, so it’s all ruined and we have to grouse, of course we do.

And the dog is sad because he knows he’ll be left behind on an open porch with a bowl of food and a bigger bowl of water.

So instead, I climb that far-away tree to its very top, scant branches making a fine platform, my legs swinging as the trees sways in the stronger winds; I’ll stay with the dog because I know where they hide the spare key, and then the lake and the dock will be ours.

They’ll never find me.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2024)