Friday Fictioneers – Illumination

~ neilmacdon
dale-rogerson2
PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Eyes watering with strain Brother Eadfrith bent over the parchment, retracing in ink the silverpoint outlines. His back ached. Late afternoon light slanting low through the casement cast a shadow, and he shifted the sheet of vellum on the oak desk.

With delicate brush, he applied the ochre border and then crimson for the saint’s robes and animal’s coats.  Finally, he laid gold leaf onto the capitals. The sun touched the page, and beauty clasped the text. Lines of fire connected hidden meaning that sparked from image to sentence, from intricately scribed knot to ornate capital – earth, ladder, heaven.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wissoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise here

94 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Illumination”

  2. That jumped up and grabbed my senses. Could almost smell the ink and catch the shadows reflected from the gold leaf. Charming and very descriptive.

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  17. Wooooooooow! Vivid descriptions, Neil. Very inspired, I can tell. I have always been a fan of those types of art that use the first letter in the text and have pictures in them. That’s what i imagined, anyway.

    Five out of five monk’s haircuts.

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      1. Astonishing feats of technique and beauty. I always love the bizarre pictures some of the scribes included in the margins – monkeys and rabbits and numerous other animals behaving in very odd ways!

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  30. Beautifully written with such careful and catching description. The piece really pulls you in with the work this skilled artisan and monk of long ago is creating on the page.

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  33. Reading that wonderful description made me feel so calm and at peace. I just so love illuminations — the colours, the detail, the thought of how much concentrated work and patience went into producing it. In fact, the whole idea of monastic living fascinates me. I have a particular love of plainchant — listening to it, and singing it.

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