This week's picture prompt is a digital creation by Ciara, or Aura, as she calls herself online, and She Freaks, She Speaks, over on Facebook. She actually have a whole selection of these baths as well as Moon Crescent shape ones, but this was the one that spoke to me to be written about. She also has a shop where she sell crystals and crystal jewellery. If you like that sort of thing there's a lot of choice.
Short and sweet this week. Just what came into my head.
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Happiness
She knew he wanted
to make her happy, but she wasn’t sure buying her a stained glass bath was what
she meant. It was beautiful and functional, and lying in this rainbow bathwater,
made that way by the light reflecting through the different coloured stained glass,
was delightful, but it had nothing to do with their relationship.
It wasn’t beautiful things she needed to
make her happy, it was an attentive, loving partner. Mostly he was absent – not
physically but mentally. He’d come home and either switch on the telly or the
gaming machine. He barely spoke most of the time. And she understood that his
work was demanding, and was grateful for everything he provided, but she felt
invisible, transparent, much like this bath.
When out socially, he might admire her when
talking to others, and pretend she was the most beautiful thing on earth, but once
home, it was like she had no substance. She was like this bath, beautiful to behold,
but when the door was shut, it was like it wasn’t even there.
She wanted to have vibrant conversations
with him and know his thoughts and feelings on things. She wanted to feel connected
and not just in bed at night when he was in the mood.
She wanted to believe he loved her, but
again, like the bath, she felt functional. She took care of the house, the
kids, the day to day. She organised and tidied and had all the time in the
world to do her own thing. But she didn’t want to do her own thing all the time,
by herself every day, day after day for the rest of her life. She wanted a life
with him, a life together, where they shared conversations, interests, friends,
and had a social life.
She had tried to explain this any amount of
ways but still he just thought she was unhappy about some minor thing that had
happened, or something from the past. He didn’t actually understand what she needed.
She sighed, sinking lower into the warm enchanting
waters of this beautiful bath.
And if she chose to go? He would never understand
why. He would just tell himself he couldn’t make her happy, when really he never
tried.
It wasn’t beautiful things she needed to
make her happy, it was an attentive, loving partner. Mostly he was absent – not
physically but mentally. He’d come home and either switch on the telly or the
gaming machine. He barely spoke most of the time. And she understood that his
work was demanding, and was grateful for everything he provided, but she felt
invisible, transparent, much like this bath.
When out socially, he might admire her when
talking to others, and pretend she was the most beautiful thing on earth, but once
home, it was like she had no substance. She was like this bath, beautiful to behold,
but when the door was shut, it was like it wasn’t even there.
She wanted to have vibrant conversations
with him and know his thoughts and feelings on things. She wanted to feel connected
and not just in bed at night when he was in the mood.
She wanted to believe he loved her, but
again, like the bath, she felt functional. She took care of the house, the
kids, the day to day. She organised and tidied and had all the time in the
world to do her own thing. But she didn’t want to do her own thing all the time,
by herself every day, day after day for the rest of her life. She wanted a life
with him, a life together, where they shared conversations, interests, friends,
and had a social life.
She had tried to explain this any amount of
ways but still he just thought she was unhappy about some minor thing that had
happened, or something from the past. He didn’t actually understand what she needed.
She sighed, sinking lower into the warm enchanting
waters of this beautiful bath.
And if she chose to go? He would never understand
why. He would just tell himself he couldn’t make her happy, when really he never
tried.
The compact gun was a wake-up call. It reminded her of the world they’d come from; the small circle of its bore more real than anything else in this alternate realm they’d begun to consider home. But it couldn’t be ignored: it was a genuine threat, the weight of the finger on its trigger almost enough to release a localised hell upon earth. A little more pressure and Jim could be dead, his blood staining the glass of their vessel, turning its blues to reds.
ReplyDelete“It’s a curious device, this mechanism of steel,” Grimm said, keeping it aligned with Jim’s head. “A peculiar combination of metallurgy and chemistry. I’ve already tried it, much to the detriment of Mordred. He’s lacking some toes, but I’m sure he’ll recover. At least his injury’s not fatal, but he’ll have a limp for some time.”
The islanders’ regenerative powers had been a surprise to Eileen and Jim. Grimm had already recovered from losing an eye, the swelling around the socket on the left side of his face already beginning to subside, the orb within it functional again. But it was unlikely that Jim would be so lucky; any wounding he received here was most probably likely to respond as it would have back at their original home.
“What do you want?” Eileen was torn. On the one hand, she wanted to distance herself from this man. On the other hand, she needed to wrestle with him, to snatch the gun from his hand and turn it back on him. There was no guarantee that anything she did to him would be fatal. But a second shot to his head would at least slow him down, allowing them to distance themselves from him and his band of brigands.
Grimm sighed, each one of them knowing the answer already. It was a tedious waste of his time. He had a weapon: he had all the advantages. There was nothing she could do to redress the balance. She would give him what he wanted and hope he’d be merciful.
The jewelled ship soared, its passage through the heavens marked by a coruscating blaze of light. A trail of crystalline chimes followed behind in its wake, the sum of these drawing the eyes of everyone below, attracting the jealous and the larcenous in equal measure.
Who would have thought they’d have believed it was just a bath? An elaborate one, to give it its due, but a piece of bathroom furniture, nonetheless. Like a stained-glass artist’s drug-addled dream crossed with a small child’s fantasy, it had been hidden away in an unmarked crate for hundreds of years, nobody realising the power and the majesty imbued in the creation that had been described simply as ‘Argo – questionable. No significant reliable provenance’.
At least I wrote something. Maybe not so good. But words count, right?
ReplyDeleteLead, You Dummy! Lead!