Hello friends! Here is my #fiftywords short story for this week’s prompt, “snowflake.”
Something surprising happened as I was writing this story and finding images. I’ll share that after the story.
When Winter Comes
Hilde took her daughter’s hand. They trudged on. They had come to gather wild mushrooms — buttons, chanterelles — a few for their simple meals, a few to sell at the market.
But their baskets were empty.
Winter was coming too soon.
The temperature dropped. And snowflakes fell — slow and menacingly silent.
For a bit of backstory, I will share what I was trying to convey. Also, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I want to share something surprising that happened.
I was trying to convey how something as lovely and soft and amazing as a snowflake can be menacing in certain contexts. Snowflakes are so delightful when you have food and warmth at your disposal, and dangerous when those things are scarce, or you are dependent on the land for food. I love writing stories based on prompts that could go in many different directions, depending on the imagination of the writer, as my regular Fifty Word Short Story Challenge participants will tell you.
The surprising thing was that the two images above came from two different photographers who post their photos for creative commons use on Pixabay. The first one is by biancamentil and the second one is by Nick_H.
These pictures are of the exact same bench, taken from the exact same angle, right? Do you think the photographers separately captured this bench in different conditions? Or do you think the second one doctored the image from the first, digitally turning fall into winter?
Thanks for reading, friends!