They say there was peace once. They say the world wasn’t so bleak. They say the people used to have the keys to their destinies. The riddles of an addled old woman guided them through their adulthood. They say she had foreseen this too.
High up in the mountains, tucked away in a hidden glade, is a weathered home, no more than a shack. The mural on the dilapidated wall has faded with age, the weaver’s threads indistinguishable from the moss and ivy that coat it.
On the stoop stands a woman with dark hair flowing out from the cowl of a hood, over her shoulders and down to her waist. She waits quietly. In the trees, a bird calls. A smile tugs at her lips.
They thought the mural belonged in the village. They had come to reclaim it from her. It was a shackle that bound them, but she would free them. She would make them see, this was the way it had to be.
Black feathers fluttered to the ground as they burst through the trees. Only two of them. They were not expecting to find the shack protected. They did not think a single, aging woman could be effective protection, but they had grown up with the rumors.
Glassy eyes stared at them from inside the cowl of her cloak. Her hair stirred, and a large black bird appeared on her shoulder. She knew they would run away. She had seen it.
She was the Raven Lady, and she could see the future.
Notes: As soon as I saw this prompt, I knew I wanted to revisit the fantasy realm of a prompt I wrote earlier about an old woman who could apparently see the futures of all the people in her village and the girl who would defy her assigned destiny. I thought maybe Lydia would seek a second opinion for her brother (and herself) regarding the Keys they had been given. But as I tried to think of a good jumping off point, I got thinking about the Raven Lady and how to describe her, and her long, dark hair reminded me of Lydia so I thought “what if Lydia is the Raven Lady?” and approached it from that angle.
As usual, there are so many more things I would like to have done with this, but I got off to a super late start because I was socializing with work friends after dinner and the time got away from me. And then I was on the struggle bus to stay awake even for this little snippet.
But I did it! I did the thing! I wrote the words! Few though they may have been. Kept working that big ol muscle between my ears. Sometimes motivating ourselves through the times we most want to quit is the hardest thing to do. But it’s necessary. She says, reflecting on her own surrender during NaNo… but it’s a new day after all.
That does it for my ramblings tonight. I’ll see you Friday! Hoping to have a silly piece, but we’ll see where the muse takes us.
Closet Full of Notebooks 