Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 203

This week's picture prompt is from American artist Mark Hadley. He has some incredible art and is definitely worth checking out. 

As I am putting together Tricky's new book, there are snippets to be had. (Last Tricky Tale was on Week 202)

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.

Clarity

Tricky crept into the glade. They’d know she was here, but she didn’t want to startle them all the same. She sat on the thick moss carpet and crossed her legs, letting out a long breath. Time in the glade seemed to still and shimmer.

It had been a long time since she’d sought their help, but she was stumped with a way forward and knew that time spent with them would bring her clarity.

One by one the butterflies began to appear until they spiralled up and down in a spinning kaleidoscope, the light catching their delicate wings turning them all colours of the rainbow. Tricky waited.

From the tops of the trees came a swishing sound and she knew they had arrived. The air glittered and one by one the spinning butterflies grew, taking on limbs and bodies, and with a flutter of a wing faces appeared.

They landed one by one on her head and shoulders, and knees and arms until they were all standing facing her. Tricky tried to remain passive and not be unnerved. She reminded herself they were friendly and not about to rip her face off. But she didn’t trust easy and the thought made her twitch as she endeavoured to remain calm, causing them to jostle about, their wings fluttering, a ripple like a wave running through them all as they maintained their balance.

Tricky took another breath and dare to close her eyes. They didn’t speak with mouth or tongue but with mind and light. She could see the question mark behind her eyelids and endeavoured to picture her predicament to them.

The single magpie and the man that controlled it, picturing Lucien Dufray in his room in the house, and then gone, and all the locations she had sought him, to no avail. She thought about the trees and their unsettled motions, and then Adric and his concern etched on that beautiful face.

She heard a fluttering occur at the sight of his face. Yes, he was a hottie and the fairies thought so too. But the picture they put in her head puzzled her.

The upside down chair from her dreams appeared, but this time with a cat sitting on it, looking at her, and not one she knew. Then another joined it and another, and they sat staring at her. Then they jumped off and the chair was turned upright, planted firmly into the ground and a mirror appeared on it, facing Tricky, and reflecting her younger self back at her. And behind her in that mirror came Adric’s face. What did it mean?

Then behind that there was water, lots of it, rushing and churning, getting closer and closer. The unsailable sea. And there was something in the water, but she couldn’t see what. Then the picture shimmered and melted away, and a road appeared, a long winding one. Yes, she had some travelling to do if she was to go to the coast.

The picture vanished and Tricky waited, but there was no more and when she opened her eyes she was alone in the glade.

She’d wanted clarity but felt more churned up than before, although now she had a direction – she had to go to the coast. But as their landmass was surrounded by it, how would she know which one?

She slapped her leg in frustration. She felt played. She’d rather they’d ripped her face off. It would have been preferable to the puzzle they posed. But the image of the path returned to her mind and she wondered if she didn’t recognise it. Wasn’t that Ferristan way?

As she made her way back out of the glade and through the forest, she became more certain that it was.