Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 295

This week's picture is by photographer Swen Stroop. He calls this one Full Circle. It is of the Callanish Stones in Scotland. He has some amazing shots from various places in the world, definitely worth having a look. 

Another Tricky tale as I ramp up to writing book 3 in June. Testing out some ideas and seeing how they feel. The last Tricky tale was on Week 293. 

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.




Nexus Point
Tricky reached thepeak of the hill and looked across the craggy land, all dishevelled and broken.The trees were moving in at the edges, but hadn’t yet covered it. There weren’tany dwellers here; the ground was mostly volcanic rock and granite. A couple ofhundred years hadn’t broken it down enough to be workable. But the trees wouldfind a way and one day it would flourish.

And then she saw it. Her mother had said itwas here: the stone circle.

It was astounding what had survived theshift, but Tricky knew that this had been laid in such a way it wasn’t going tobe easily moved. Strong power lines lay across the Earth and despite the disruptionof the shift, they didn’t move. Plus they knew how to erect things back then –not in the time just before the shift, but a few thousand years before thatwhen this had been built.

Humans before the shift thought this wassome kind of religious effigy – which seemed to be what they thought aboutanything they didn’t understand. But it was just the bones of a house; a largehouse for its time, probably a meeting house, maybe where they traded, but justa house. Religion didn’t take hold until the dark years a couple of thousandyears later, when humans became so populated that greed took over and wars wereraged. Religion became a useful tool to manipulate folk, take over their landand putting them into servitude, while milking them at the same time: ‘give us yourtreasures and it’ll buy you a ticket to absolution after you die’. What a greatcon! And Tricky thought she was tricky!

The shift had occurred at the peak periodof such behaviour and brought it all crashing down around their ears. It’s whathappens; nature finds a way to cleanse much better than any imaginary god.

Still this circle was a sight to behold,and the energy shone all around it, making it glow. As she moved closer, thegolden energy it emitted encompassed her, and she breathed it in. But it didn’tfill her up like other energies, instead it washed her own, polishing it untilit glowed in the same way. Tricky felt renewed.

She moved into the circle and stood in itscentre. The point where it came together was the strongest and it was here shewas going to try an experiment.

If she had it right, this would be whereshe could open a line to multiple pockets of times, sort of a nexus point. Butshe wasn’t sure.

She brought out her obsidian with a pieceof germwort wrapped round it, and opened her tin of creasy. She took in a deepbreath, feeling the golden air going into her lungs and blew across the stone.It sparkled. Then she sprinkled a pinch of creasy over it.

She was thrown back by the loud crack that displacedthe air, and a gap appeared in front of her running way up above the stone circle.It had layers. She was looking at multiple places on top of each other, like abookshelf. She could pick and choose where she wanted to go. Or in this case,where she planned to leave him.

Most of these pockets weren’t accessibleanywhere else on the landmass, because there was no where else this powerful.And being able to return was unlikely unless you could find a point over thereas powerful; it could take years. Tricky was grateful to the ancient civilisationwho’d built this, but she doubted they had known. They were probably just drawnto it and been oblivious like most people.

It didn’t mean he wouldn’t know about thisplace though, he might, but did he know what it could do? She doubted it. Evenher own mother hadn’t known. And until this moment it had been just an inkling inTricky’s suspicious mind, which only developed after extensive research now shehad her books back.

Tricky preened herself a little. Oh yes,she was the true master of time. She knew that. He liked to distract himselfwith too many things to honestly understand the purity of it. He fiddled aboutin the now, using it for his personal gain. He pretended to be a great mentor,but none of his underlings came close to their full potential and he liked itthat way.

If Tricky achieved this she was doing thema service – and the rest of the landmass. Without Gandalf, aka Douglas Bottle,lending the network his gifts, they would no longer be able to manipulate andcon others into doing their bidding. You needed power for that, and he was theirlink to it.

Oh yes, if she could pull this off theymight be able to settle down to living and build their society in a healthyway. Ridding herself of her would-be assassin was just an added benefit. Oh yesit was.

So now she knew, what next? She’d spotted aparticular dark little place about half way up. Yes, that would do nicely, butnow to work out how to lead him there. Tricky set her tricky mind to work on itas she closed up the opening, safe in the knowledge she might have a solution.