The Collector

I’m glad to be back in the pack of Friday Fictioneers after a three-week absence caused by a glorious trip to a small town in Mexico. WiFi was iffy at best. So, here is my 101-word submission for this week. I can’t wait to enjoy stories written by my fellow FF gang members.

Sanji was a collector.
She collected blue glass floats, bound them inside lost fishing nets and rescued sailors drowning at sea.
She collected thick green moss and willow twigs in order to weave soft nests
for creatures caught in the manmade catastrophes of fire and ice.
But the most important thing Sanji collected were the sweet dreams of elders.
These she wrapped in bright silks of turquoise, ruby red, and shimmering gold.
She gently placed them in a jar made from diamonds and dispensed them
to children tortured by nightmares riding inside the whirling storms of war.

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Abandoned

Each morning Beatrice goes down to the sea to collect pieces of glass –
thrown among the driftwood by high tide –
and strings the colored fragments into necklaces and bangles for her arms.

She makes her dresses of silk and satin, corduroy and canvas,
and decorates them with pelts from wolves, bear, and elk.
Village children dare each other to touch her hair
which shimmers like star dust blended with thin threads of gold.
She pays no heed.

After three months her bruises are gone,
the fingers Spencer broke before leaving are beginning to mend –
but her mind remains fragile and bent.

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Where Did He Go?

Yesterday I encountered a funny little man in these twisted woods. Dressed in bark, vines in his hair. Two feet high, one foot wide, three eyes and a nose like a solid brass trumpet. “Come back on the morrow and I will grant you one wish,” said he.

One wish, one wish, one wish. Gold? Silk? Baskets of fruit?  A barrel of meat? My husband? The child?

Reenter the woods. My mind in a whirl. Nothing moves. No birds. No wind. No little man.

I remain lost. Hallucinating again.