Yes, I know I’ve been very sporadic with my posts on here, and I’ll try to blog more regularly in future (no promises). But for now I’ve got another little flash fiction story to share. This one’s about some lonely skis, (although it’s secretly just some rather self-indulgent prose) there’s not much story to it, but from the list of flash fiction ideas I made the other day this is the one that stuck with me.
I wish that I’d had another 300 words to fatten up the second half, seeing as I wasted the first half of the story with pretty scenery, but such is the rather masochistic nature of flash fiction.
Arctic Abandon
A pair of wooden skis watched as the sun danced a circle around them, their shadows acting as dancing partners, moving in time with the sun. They’d been left standing upright in the snow atop a mountain years ago, silent watchers over the desolate wasteland that stretched below them in all directions.
They would watch the mountains that wrapped around them from west to east, primeval monuments with jagged peaks and smooth slopes.
A massive valley stretched to the east, between their mountain range and one on the horizon. Clouds would form over that range, brewing, streaming, and thinning out into hazy lines, making puppet shows of shadow in the valley below.
The valley ended in a ridged glacier that spilled into a southern facing cove. The cove breathed, rising and falling, ice swirling and glistening on the water’s surface. Beyond the cove lay the sea, glittering and flowing, the sun highlighting quicksilver streams of current leading out into the open ocean.
The skis had been well loved by their owner, he’d even once joked to his expedition companions that he would sooner forget where he’d set up his tent than where he’d left his skis.
Despite that, he’d left them behind.
One morning his companions had taken down his tent and bundled up his unresponsive body before setting off down the mountain, pulling him along behind them. The skis had watched them leave; traveling down to a waiting boat and setting sail south.
They’d both been so certain that their owner would return for them.
In the third year a strong gust of wind knocked one of the skis over, but still they held strong to their belief. He would return.
It was only after a decade had passed that they finally began to understand.
No one was coming.