Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 319 - The Final Prompt!

This week's - and final - picture prompt is from digital artist Jeffrey Smith. I love his art. I used others of his pieces on Week 245, Week 307 and Week 310. It's definitely something I'd fill my house with. He created this back in 2017 and called it 'I'm never going back.' Strangely app for my last Mid-Week Flash entry and post. 

I've decided I need more time to focus on other projects and have been struggling to write for this on time or sometimes at all over the past year, so am bringing it to a halt, the end of 2023 being very fitting as I've been running it for 7 years, and life tends to run in 7 year cycles.

I will never say never in terms of returning to it, but for now, it's time to retire it. It's benefitted my writing so much, and I've really enjoyed it. 

Today's is short and sweet as I am still working on Tricky's third book, and this is a snippet. 

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.


Left Hanging

He’d gone and leftanother one open! What was with him? Did he really think Tricky was thatstupid? His big shiny ‘follow me this way’ signs weren’t going to fool her, ohno. She wasn’t going to jump through every open time portal he created in anattempt to chase him, no way, definitely not. He thought she was stupid,clearly, or that she wasn’t as gifted as him - but he was proving he couldn’tpossibly be, with leaving these things hanging in the sky all over the place.

Tricky stopped on the path to take in the magnificenceof this opening though; portals were truly beautiful to behold, even thoughthey were horribly dangerous – and not just for the individual but for thewhole time plane. It was like making a tiny hole in the leg of a stocking, eventuallyit would tear the entire thing apart, making it unusable.

Tricky narrowed her eyes, or was that hisplan? Was he trying to destabilise it all? Or was he trying to play some randomgame with her that didn’t make sense, other than boy wizards with overblownegos who were crap at setting traps?

Tricky didn’t waste time on trying to workout his mindless ploys to entrap her, she knew better, but she wasn’t justgoing to ignore what he’d done, instead she had to work to close the portal andreturn this plane to safety.

It didn’t take her long, being that she’ddone it before, and with the swathes of grasslands around her there was anabundance of energy to work with and help her shut it down. It was still scaryas it pulled together – also pulling at her - but once it reduced to a certainsize it zipped up quickly with a deafening pop, and the pale blue sky returned.

It cleared the pathway ahead, which led inbetween the fields to a point as yet not visible, but Tricky knew was there. Sheneeded to reach it before dark. She took in deep breaths, calling in her ownyellow energy and the lime green of the land around and sped up. This was not aplace to be after dark.