Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 175

This week's picture prompt is by Igor Zenin a Moldovian photographer. He calls it Sunset Run We've actually had another of his way back on Week 10! That one was called Dancing Trees - clearly he likes doing these (and I like using them).

Another snippet for you from my currently WIP - Tricky's first book. It's coming on nicely. (Last Tricky piece was Week 169)

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Sprites

Tricky rose early the next morning wanting to catch the dawn light. It also meant she didn’t have to shield herself when coming off the jetty to cabin as the world was still sleeping and despite the risks of the trees, she slipped off between them as the sky turned from ink black to grainy grey, still an hour off dawn. She headed towards the hillside out west of the village and climbed to the top where only the low lying shrubby pines could hold on, and she looked down over the rest of Clancy, spotting the fresh water lake off to her left. She made her way towards it, using spurts of energy to get there before the crack of dawn appeared on the horizon. It was the county’s water reserve, and fed the towns within. It was also an ancient site, having survived the shift unharmed. The forest nibbling at its edge had much to talk about, should it ever choose to speak, with much of the landmass having been turned over around it, yet it remaining intact. It was considered sacred and contained elements lost to all the other counties. It was patrolled, and few people were allowed into its realms, though Tricky knew at this time in the morning there would be no one to stop her.

Tricky wasn’t going there to raid it for elements, not this morning at least. Today she was here to see the sprites, which would be coming out soon for their morning cleanse. People had stopped believing in such fairy tales, which was all the better for them - and her. It meant they could exist in private and keep their purity, and meant she could visit them. Their energy was particularly valuable and she hoped to soak some up, if she could get close enough. They were shy and suspicious, and didn’t take well to any observer, particularly not human.

Humans didn’t believe trees were sentient. They saw them as solid and stationary, and unfeeling. They cut them down and used them for their own means - and Tricky had to be honest and admit she used them too, but she tried to be respectful when she did. Like populations of all living things, they needed culling from time to time. Trees had benefited from the recent cull of the human population. It had given them back land and air and returned many precious elements they had lost. Tricky was particularly interested in how they used them. She noticed species of trees unseen before, leaf shape and colour something new and seemingly unnatural. Green was no longer the standard in trees, dark purples and deep blues had been growing up amongst them. They brought with them their own types of energy, ones that Tricky found far more useful due to their intensity.

When she was within a metre of the water’s edge but still obscured by trees, Tricky sat down, making herself comfortable as she looked over the water. It was turning from a dark mirror, to one that had light rising from within it. The light along the horizon line turned royal blue and tricky watched as shrubs and bushes along the shoreline began to move.

They were like dancing ladies as they stepped out into the shallows. The edge of golden light growing across the water silhouetted them in her view. They splashed and cavorted, and twirled round. There were no faces, but legs and arms, and bushes at the tops that looked like heads. She wasn’t yet familiar with the reason for this ritual, she only knew they were the essence of trees that broke free and came to embrace the water. Was it their way of bringing water to the trees? She didn’t know. She only knew that once the tip of the sun crested the water’s far edge, they would rush back into the trees and not be seen again until the next morning. She had to be fast if she wanted to reap any nourishment from this visit.

Tricky took in a deep breath and stilled her thoughts, opening her mind’s eye and pushing her own energy up and through it, sending it out towards the water, feeling out where theirs was. When she touched the edge of theirs it sparked and flashed, but yet they remained oblivious. Each spark and flash sent a shot of electric energy back to her, which she absorbed until she reached a point where she thought her hair must be standing on end. Then she carefully pulled back her own energy, and sealed it up, mentally binding it back with her own body energy. Tricky felt full.