Friday Fictioneers – Red Barns

~ Neil MacDonald
PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The sky was not particularly blue, nor the grass particularly green. But the barns shone vibrant red, like the houses back home—Dad’s one concession to being foreign. In all other respects, he said, “Now we’re here,  and must fit in.”

I saw the guilt wracking him for the mistake of emigrating, for abandoning the hunt of the cod to push a plough. And I understood his pleasure when I took to reading the Edda.

“It’s good you know who you are,” he said. “The ancestors may have slaughtered folk, but it was always personal, and we composed an ode over their corpses. Here, everything’s about money.”

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

44 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Red Barns”

  3. I loved the line ‘ it was always personal’. What more can one ask when being slaughtered? This is the second time I’ve tried to respond, apologies if WP suddenly magics the first response up.

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  21. This spoke to me of the immigrant experience. I have personal knowledge of this, and I can feel the sense of loss your characters express. It’s hard to adapt, and important to retain some sense of the culture that created them. I was fascinated by the bits about slaughter in their homeland being personal, compared to the mercenary motives of the new culture.

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