Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 277

This week's prompt photo is an unknown. I had saved it from twitter, but the account it came from is no longer there. Usually Google image search, or Tin Eye give me a lead, but this time there were zero matches. I could choose to use a different photo of the same thing, but something about the shadows and the blue light inspires me more than any others of the same location I've looked at, because this is a famous location. It's a stone colonnade in Park Güell, a stunning park in Barcelona that was designed by Antoni Gaudí. Should you see this and say, this is my photo - give me a shout and I will give it full credit. I look forward to the day that all digital pictures can carry the name of their creator. 

This week a clandestine conversation. 

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Disappear
“We can’t hide here forever.”

“What other option do we have?”

Daphne strolled with Darien through the ancient colonnades of the partially ruined castle on the Duke’s grounds. Her eyes were full of fear and her jaw tense, as he glanced at her striking profile.

“We have to get you away from here before Earl Harrowith returns.”

“But I am not sure I can desert this land and my people–”

“They are no longer your people, they have made that clear.”

“They’ve had their minds twisted by Lord Cannon. He provides endless false claims and manipulates others into deluded thinking for his own ends.”

“He wants our riches alright, but pretends to others that he is liberating them from us as though we have some special power over them – when the reverse is true. But we can not fight him, not here, not now.”

“Tell me where and how?”

Darien laughed. “That day has not yet come, my beloved, first we must depart and let the world die down. We need to find a safe location where you won’t be found or recognised and where we will live a very different life.”

“And is there such a place?”

“Yes, I believe I have found it.”

“Where?”

“I have entrusted no one with that information, and I don’t dare tell even you. I have made plans though, for each stage of our journey, so no single person can work it out.”

“But we will be followed, surely? We haven’t been able to take a single step out of here, since we were ousted from our home.”

Daphne stopped walking and stood wringing her hands as her eyes searched the gardens between the columns for the glint of sun on lens glass.

“That will change tonight. I have arranged disguises and papers for our trip.”

“Disguises? Do you think they will work?”

Darien was pleased to see a glimmer of hope spark in her eyes.

“Yes. I do.”

Later that evening, after the Duke of Redmaine hosted the annual dinner for over a hundred clerics and nuns from more than fifty parishes, no one noticed two additions leaving with the rest of the attendees. The car they left in was a slightly different model and not chauffeured, but no eyebrow was raised as the Queen and her consort drove out of their public lives into oblivion.