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

It wasn’t often that he sat still long enough to observe anyone of their kind, but she held a certain fascination; usually the best course of action was to keep to the shadows and skedaddle if they crept too close.

Young children posed no threat, and dogs were suspicious of any irregularity, but a pinecone, launched swift and deft, was usually enough to discombobulate those creatures.

She was regular in habit, having arrived alone at the isolated cabin by the lake about a month ago: morning coffee in the shelter of the screened porch before wandering across butterfly fields with a small backpack, a journal in which she sketched and wrote, or if rainy, trudging in noisy wellies and green raingear; a simple sandwich and tea for lunch on the porch or on the dock that stretched and wavered like a questing finger into the cold, clear lake water; a mason jar of wine at sunset with a light dinner of mostly greens and white meat, music  sounding tinny from the vintage radio inside the cabin.

The ferns under which he sat to observe her morning ritual had grown thick and heavier since she’d first arrived, but recently he’d felt like she’d been observing him, as well; this morning he drew deeper into the frilly green shelter of the forest edge when he noted the change: first the familiar scent of coffee, then the creak and sigh of the wicker porch furniture, followed by her silence as the air filled her with seagull cry and hissing rattle of wave over pebble, but now, the surprise-sharp scent of an orange being stripped, its juice exploding like drops of sunrise.

“Interesting,” he thought as he flicked open his tiny fae blade and began to trim his fingernails, and after a moment or two, silently musing “I wonder if I should tell the brotherhood about this?”

Smiling, she glanced sidewise at the stand of fern, slipping out the porch door to place a section of her orange on the edge of the dew-damp cement stoop, then padding barefoot, back into the darkness of the cabin to get herself another cup of coffee.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2025)