Cheryl Burman's Blog: Blog posts for readers and writers, page 15

Is it my imagination?

And on we go … is it my imagination or is this going on a bit longer than perhaps it should? Fun though!

‘All to do with the trees?’ Sophie asked Janet. ‘I know trees are important, but how can that affect Mum?’

Janet gazed over the forest before her. The green had dulled, faded, become faintly translucent, as if a diaphanous veil had been thrown over the scene, including the sky. The Goblin King must not yet have completed his work.

‘This forest, and our forest at home, are linked, through you...

Your life is not unworthy

Back in the Planning Office …

Beefy planning man glowered at his former docile assistant. ‘You’re unworthy to work in this office,’ he shouted. ‘A snivelling, fawning, joke of a man. Your parents should never have given you life.’

Simon shrank back, and fell against the Goblin King who waved his sword, threatening Beefy – where had Simon come up with that name for his boss, who was actually called Wayne? His head spun with the events of the morning. Dragons and princesses come to life, Goblin ...

He turned his back on her

When Sophie arrived at the castle, her cousin Janet greeted her. Naturally, Sophie is very curious about what’s going on.

Sophie hugged her cousin tightly. ‘You going to tell me what the heck is happening?’ she muttered into Janet’s neck.

Janet pulled back, held Sophie’s arms. ‘I guess an explanation is in order. Come up to my room, we’ll have breakfast and I’ll tell you what I found out from our grandparents last night.’

‘Our grandparents? Aren’t they dead?’ Sophie waited to wake from this sur...

But now she tired of the drama

We’re back to Sophie, who has been fetched by Dragon, and agreed to go when told by Fairy this was the only way to save her fading mother.

Perched precariously on the back of a dragon, Sophie’s mind had gone to that place where she believed she was in a dream, that none of this was real and soon she would wake. Worry niggled at her brain, that there was something wrong somewhere, and when she woke she would be overwhelmed by it once more.

The back of a dragon is not a good place to sleep, alt...

She stared at the moonlit ceiling

More Janet and dragons, forests and planners … I might one day go back and pull them together into a proper short story. See what threads I’ve lost!

Hopeless trying to sleep. Not tonight. Janet lay in the vast feather-mattressed bed and stared at the moonlit ceiling high above her. She had forgotten the grace of this room, her bedroom high in her parents’ castle, with its stone arched ceiling, tall windows, and a wide balcony overlooking the forest beyond the castle’s walls. Not her paren...

Woman in blue raincoat picture prompt

Woman in blue raincoat is a new twist on Janet. I didn’t mean to go there, it just happened. As for what happens next? Shrugs!

Sophie should have gone by the path in the woods. It would have been muddy in this rain, but less exposed. The trees would have sheltered her. Time, however, was critical.

‘She’s fading fast,’ her father had said on the phone, less than an hour ago. ‘I should call the hospital, but I want to keep her here.’

Sophie had nodded her agreement and whispered, ‘Yes,’ in an...

Wild garlic and cheddar scones

We love wild garlic and cheddar scones at this time of year, so I took myself on a walk in my old haunts near the last village we lived in, a few miles from here, to see if the wild garlic has started to come through. Delighted that it has, so I picked a handful of leaves and we enjoyed our first wild garlic scones as a light(ish) supper that evening. I cooked them in the electric oven at 200C for 15 mins and they were delicious.

NOTE: When foraging wild garlic, NEVER pull the plant out by t...

She couldn’t remember things

Continuing Janet still … I think there’s more to come, although it has rather deteriorated into a bit of nonsense!

It was only because of Dragon that Janet had been able to force her way into the Council’s inner offices. The receptionist  – a hen-breasted woman with poorly bleached hair tamed by a can of hairspray – assured her she needed an appointment to see the Planning Officer. Janet, being a reasonable person, asked for the earliest available appointment and waited expectantly for th...

‘What are you doing here?’

Continuing Janet … and wondering how far this will go.

In the district council planning office, two men stood over the map spread on the wide table.

‘There, and there.’ One, a beefy fellow who looked like he enjoyed his Gregg’s pasties a little too much, stabbed his thick finger at two spots on the map marked with rows of tree symbols – the kind that kiddies draw, with straight trunks topped by an upturned bowl of green.

‘Hmm.’ The other, more ascetic looking man, stroked his fuzzy chin. He...

They exchanged that glance that mingles hope and fear

Continuing Janet … I promised Daisy, and here’s a little more.

Janet needed to digest the news her parents told – of how the farmland she had grown up with would be developed into houses, a great lump of a soulless supermarket and, worst of all, a parking lot.

‘There’s more,’ her mother said. She shook her head, disbelieving. ‘There’s talk of building behind us too. In the forest.’

Janet’s grip on her father’s bony fingers tightened. Memories of their walks in those woods filled her mi...