Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 257

This week's picture prompt was taken by photographer, Steve Bougeno. Taken back in November 2015, he says it is a wind break at Shaw Nature Reserve in the Missouri Botanical Gardens. He has some wonderful nature photos, definitely worth checking out. And apparently, according to the person who posted this picture on twitter, it is a 'crinkle crankle wall' which means it resists horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight walls.

Another glimpse into Tricky's world for this week's piece. The last time was on Week 253. 

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.

Getting Ahead

Tricky waited for the view to stop wobbling, then realised it was wobbly – the brick wall was not straight. Odd, she’d not seen one like that before. Was it meant to be like that, or had someone been drinking when they built it?

One of the first things to make a return after the shift was alcohol. It seemed humans didn’t want to live without it, although the methods and vegetables they now used had become creative. She wasn’t really interested in it. She preferred herbal tea. She didn’t need to get out of her mind to have fun; when you could open pockets of time and step into other worlds, it paled by comparison.

She climbed down off the wall she’d found herself on and walked along it. Nope, that wobble was definitely deliberate as it was perfectly constructed to flick-flack at certain intervals. Weird. She wondered what else was off kilter here.

The thing with opening rents in time was that really you had no idea where you were and when you were. And although everyone called it ‘time’, it wasn’t really; it was some kind of inter dimensional movement. Tricky wasn’t into all the complicated science of the how or why, it just was, and she accepted it, much as she would accept a mole on a man’s penis. It’s there, you take it or leave it – doesn’t make much difference to the doing or the outcome. Although maybe with dimensions the outcome could be affected depending what you were doing. She snickered to herself. Ha! She’d have to explore that one, one day. She wondered if Nathan was the experimental type … but she wasn’t here to ponder all that, she was here to get her arse moving and get ahead of Stanislav and his crony.

She didn’t have to travel far, but she did have to make sure she was opening at the right place. She rushed down the length of the wall, vaguely wondering what it was doing here, and then saw there was a wood at the end where the wall went left. Excellent, just what she needed.

Tricky climbed back on the wall, and at the corner gripped onto an overhanging oak. It’s deep green energy seeping into her arms as she clambered up and onto a branch, settling into a nook a few feet off the ground.

She pulled the mirror out of her pocket, the one Nathan had returned to her. It wasn’t just a mirror, it could see between dimensions. She didn’t know how her mother had discovered it, but it had been part of their family collection of tools for their craft. Tricky had assumed it had ended up in the hands of the network. She loved that Nathan had held onto it.

She placed it in her palm, her energy activating it, and held it up so the light caught it. It glinted. The image it reflected wasn’t of this place but of the Ferriston forest. She turned it slightly so the path came into view and she could see them walking along. Yes, she was ahead of them. Good.

She rummaged in her pocket for the chip of obsidian with her other hand, the germwort still wrapped around it, and ran a finger along the lining of the pocket, feeling for a few crumbs of creasy. She grasped a big one with the tips of her fingers and brought them out into the open. When she manoeuvred the crumb onto the stone, a loud crack in the air caused the tree to rustle in surprise and a small gap opened up. She hoped the crack hadn’t been as loud on the other side or they might have heard it.

She slid through the gap, climbing from one tree to the other – a nice pine who seemed pleased to greet her. She felt the excited bright green energy run up her arm. She took her thumb off the crumb of creasy, letting it fall to the ground, and nestled into the trunk of the tree, her eyes on her stalkers. She was keen to see where they were going.