A Moment

/ Liz H-H

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

They’d hiked up the lower reaches of the hillside, beyond the altitude where trees turn to shrub, where a glacial waterfall tumbled through the Saga Sister caverns and down to the ailing peoples of Walden’s Hold by the sea.         

Liza left the backpacks with Daniel, carrying on into the deep crevice where the inner cave with the necessary healing mushrooms grew; although Daniel was a particularly astute adept, he was young, his budding adolescence putting the entire venture at risk, his magic too unpredictable to expose him to the power of the inner cavern.

With stakes so high for both the ailing community and Daniel’s nascent talents, the healer foraged quickly while the boy waited at the edge of the rippling pool where the waterfall paused to breathe before tumbling on its way downward.

***

When Liza returned, front pack heavy with the bounty of medicinal mushrooms, Daniel had slipped into the pool and was up to his waist, his head tipped toward the dizzying, swirling sound of fiddle and flute played by the tiny fossegrimen flickering in and out of the fall’s tendrils.

“You’ll not have him yet…please,” Liza muttered, slipping the pack from her neck to the ground and grabbing the back of Daniel’s tunic to pull him back.

As the creatures melted into the tumult of the waterfall and the music faded, Daniel looked up into Eliza’s eyes, the brilliant green ring around his irises relaxing into their normal warm brown of recognition.     

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2024)

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