As you can see from the date, I'm tardy with my response to this extra flash fiction challenge. It might be that, my brain mired in promo land, I'm baffled by the prompt: life as a river of consciousness. It might be that it's meant to be a special tribute to Sue Vincent and I'm scared of messing up. I knew from the start where I wanted to set my 99-word story: although Sue and I have never met off-line, we've shared some physical territory. The problem is, although winter rain has flooded footpaths, there are no rivers up on the Derbyshire moors. |
And a few not from Christmas Eve, and not quite Beeley Moor (but close):
Plus you need a guide stoop and a pair of green hairstreak mating:
On Beeley Moor
Legend coats this landscape: stone circles, the bronze-age burial mound, Hob Hurst’s House. Layers of later industry: guide stoops for the packhorse trails, millstones left unfinished when grit-grey bread went stale. My thoughts flow through histories of those I’ve met here, steered here, recollected on these moors. Consciousness a stream of memories adrift from date or time. Ideas I’ve birthed amid the heather, drowned in peat-bog, revived on bilberry bushes as green hairstreaks feed. Until the final stile prompts my wondering: What happened to the ice cream lady? How many rambles since her van’s been spotted on the bend?