Friday 26 October 2012

Five Sentence Fiction - Potions



Here we are again and a great prompt word : Potion. It's Five Sentence Fiction.




As Ricken walked through the wood with shame on his shoulders and a curse in his heart, his mood worsened; thoughts of his earlier heated exchange of words with Emily's mother troubled his mind and a veritable smorgasbord of rotten fates befell the old harridan who thought little of him and his career choice as a minstrel (How can you support a family with a lute! Useless boy! Bah!).

Dappled sunlight fell in shafts through the trees and lit up the earth floor showing two chaffinch flitting from shrub to shrub, a squirrel leaping up the bark of a silver birch and a small cart with a brightly covered canopy. 

A little old man in a neat grey smock and sandals leapt out from the cart "Lotions for your tired knees, a potion for your athsma, linament for your thighs or perfume for your wife? Anything that comes in a vial, bottle, gourd or amphora I sell it!" he said with toothless smile.

"I don't think you'd have anything for getting rid of mean old mother's in law old man," Ricken replied with a sigh "good day and better profits next time eh?"

"Now, now Ricken the Minstrel," the old man rummaged around in his smock pockets with a wicked look in his eye and drew out a stoppered glass tube, the liquid inside black as death "I think I have just what you are looking for, odourless, tasteless and deadly as sin; question is, will you sing a song about her when she's dead?"

Lillie McFerrin's site is here. Make sure you have a read of the other submissions and make sure to comment too. It's always appreciated.

Cheers,

W.

11 comments:

  1. Nice going, stretching out those lovely sentences like that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Getting better and better buddy - well done :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like... I really like...
    Very atmospheric. And your toothless old guy is a well-defined character...
    Great word choices too, especially "smorgasbord of rotten fates". When last have I seen the word harridan?
    Nice job, Wayne.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A colourful and inspiring story, and a minstrel! wonderful characters :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here from the Spooktober blog hop. Awesome job!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I like it! The description of the old man is perfect :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very visual. Very angry. Question is - will he take the bait?

    My take is the mother in law was in cahoots with the toothless man. And the potion made her young and sexy again.

    Ricken goes to jail for intent.

    ReplyDelete
  8. So many unanswered questions. Fancifully I suspect that he did the deed and that he became famous for the song he wrote about it. Thanks for posting.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wonderful visuals, I was right there, leaning on the cart listening to their conversation!

    ReplyDelete

Wotcher. Comments are welcome and make Wayne happy. Please post some. Spammers on the other hand, I hunt down, kill and eat.

Five Sentence Fiction - Bubbles

Here we are again with Five Sentence Fiction from Lillie McFerrin. The word du jour is Bubbles...