Wednesday 8 November 2023

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 312

This week's picture prompt was created by hungarian born, Sarolta Ban. She doesn't give this a name, but it is located in the old works category.  It's not the first time I've used one of her images. I used one on Week 304Week 28, and Week 24 . She has some exceptional images, I would probably pic a different one every week to use they're so good. 

Okay, this week we have a snippet out of my WIP, Tricky's third book, which I'm working on for NaNoWriMo. It just so happens this kind of phone was mentioned. The last time I wrote about Tricky was Week 305

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.


A close up shot of a rotary dial landline phone, of the dial and numbers, in black and white, an slightly altered so that it looks like it is moving. Created by Sarolta Ban

To catch a traitor

Tricky had seen one before, but never a working one. It was odd, almost unnatural seeing people talk into a piece of plastic and hear a voice back. She wondered how they’d got it working. She was sure there was a technical explanation, but she didn’t have the brain for all that nonsense; trees, energy and time were all that worked for her; the telephone wasn’t in any of those realms.

She watched him turn that weird dial: a finger in one of the holes, then it turned back by itself, it did it each time he did this. It looked a bit like a clock but its numbers didn’t make sense – not to Tricky. She sniffed. They were well shot of such things she reckoned. It had only led to distraction and then the end. Why Tumelo wanted to be messing about with them again she had no idea, but it wasn’t her business, even though it felt strange sitting here listening to him speaking to someone on the other side of the building. 

The last time she’d been to the palace had been after her mother’s death to speak to Tumelo about what she had witnessed that night. It had been an emotional visit and she hadn’t really taken in much of her surroundings, just wanting their meeting to be over. And here she was again, wanting the same, but this was just the beginning.

Tumelo put the phone down.

“They’ll be here shortly. Sorry, Tricky but you’ll need to set up all the stones again.”

Tricky didn’t mind, it gave her something to do. Although of course the emerald wouldn’t be coming out again, oh no, that was hers for the keeping. She wouldn’t trade it either. It would go in her stash with her mother’s stones, the ones that dirty backstabber Bottle wanted. But he’d never get his hands on them, oh no, not over her dead body - he’d already tried that once and there wouldn’t be an encore. She had to come up with a way of disposing of him, though maybe not death, maybe something far more fun. He liked mucking about with time so much, but did he really know how it worked? She smiled. She had an idea. A nice idea; one she would grow. In the meantime, she had to deal with this other type of backstabbing - the traitorous type. 

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