Join us for a weekly blog party in Six Sentence Stories, hosted by Denise and attended by some mighty fine, fun folk. Prompt word=HELP. Read, write and come back for more SIX SENTENCE STORIES.  (Link goes active Wed night).

Let’s Get Real 1

It started out as an uncomfortable late-morning meeting over tea with her aunt, in which Elsa dressed as her mother had always insisted: pressed, pleated skirt; stiff white blouse with a Peter Pan collar; frilly-topped white anklets inside white sandals with slippery soles not meant for running.

This time, however, she’d found her Aunt Tessa in her garden wearing cut-off jeans, a light denim button-down shirt with the sleeves torn off, hair pulled back and pony protruding from the opening over the back strap of an old Twins cap, feet barefoot and buried in rich dark dirt, snipping herbs and digging roots and placing them, efficient and gentle, into a wide basket set in the shade; it was not at all what she had come to expect from previous visits, but she felt an odd tug to join her and dig her small hands in the dirt.

Tessa stood, knees crackling, and turned to catch that hoped-for look in the girl’s face. Elsa’s mother wasn’t sure what to do with the girl, but Tessa’d recognized a likeness to her own spirit…and she knew.

“I could use some help in the garden.” Tessa tipped up the brim of her cap, wiped a line of sweat from her brow, and smiled.

Elsa gestured at her own outfit and squeaked, “My Mom’ll kill me if I get speck of dirt on this!”

“I think I have something in the house that’ll fit just fine,” Tessa laughed and picked up the basket of herbs. “And then we’ll have some tea and lemon-thyme scones.”

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2026)

Let’s Get Real 2 (prompt also HELP)

Patricia pulled up in her red station wagon—red was risky according to her husband, but she’d insisted—slammed the car door shut and stepped in her low-heeled sandals and yellow-flowered sundress across the patchy grass to the back garden and the raucous female laughter (that would surely be her sister Tessa).

Her heart pounded and she tucked an errant strand of hair, blown loose on the drive over,—open windows, though her husband insisted she risked her reputation and beautiful clear skin by not using the auto’s AC—behind an ear, and listened for her too-quiet daughter.

What she beheld as she rounded the corner of the small house were two sloppy ragamuffins on a faded quilt, one on her knees and bent over in laughter, over-sized and striped muddy overalls jangling with her movements, and the other in cutoff denims and Twins cap, pouring lemonade and clinking ice from a red Tupperware pitcher into a green tin glass, while a black cat helped himself, pawing at a chipped china plate of savory scones.

“Looks like I got here just in time,” noted Patricia wryly, wincing when her daughter stopped laughing and sat up straight.

“I’d say so,” answered Tessa in the silence that followed, adding, “Kick off your shoes, Trish, and get muddy with us.”

“Absolutely just in time,” laughed Patricia as she kicked her sandals—one-two—across the lawn and toward the back door, and slid across the quilt, grabbing her daughter in a hug and kiss that the girl hadn’t felt in far too long.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2026)