Fifa remained serene in the face of my confession, “I’m a bit in love with you, you know.”

She smiled, and the whole world lit up.

“Oh, you too?” and the starbursts were snuffed out. The sadness behind her smile spoke the unvoiced “it would be so much simpler if you weren’t.”

And it would have been. Simpler. This totally screwed up a simple business transaction.

Now I’d have to go on the run. Her husband would send someone after me. And then I’d be dead. It would have been so much simpler if I’d just pushed her as contracted.

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.

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 on creativity

A thin sunlight sifted through the branches like snow, dusting him with photons. He blinked in the sudden cold glare, hunching deeper into his army-surplus greatcoat.

Behind him, a single track of footprints snaked through the trees. Ahead, the landscape lay virgin, untrodden. His breath frosted above him, a speech bubble bereft of words.

The way home was long and uncertain, wolves shadowing every step of the trek. He threw back his head and filled the speech bubble with a silent howl of desperation. Exile makes sense if you were never really at home in the first place.

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.

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 on creativity

“You may go anywhere you please in the house,” my uncle said when they took me to live with him, “but never into my study.”

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat.

My guardian taught me boundaries. I learned to push him all the way to, but not beyond, his limits. Boundaries reassure us that, within them, we’re safe

A rise in global temperature of 1.5^oC is tolerable. Beyond 2^o, we reach a tipping point.

Later, when I met Greta, there was no tipping point, only a fall. Real maps lack boundaries.

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

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 on creativity

When the water turned solid he knew things were getting weird. Elongated raindrops hung from the branches like stretched taffy. He wondered if they might taste sweet. The air itself crystallised out and dropped in blue-white chunks from the sky, shattering musically on the ground.

So, it wasn’t really a surprise when a unicorn stepped into the clearing.

“Hello unicorn” he said.

“Hello man,” the beast replied.

“What’s happening?”

“You’re having an episode.”

“Oh, okay. I hope it doesn’t stop. It’s pretty.”

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.

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 on creativity

Jerry was always … different. Once when we were kids at the swimming baths he came up for air, pushed the black hair from his brow, and said “wouldn’t it be cool to grow gills?”

Now he’s proposing to do it.

“Jerry, you can’t,” I say. “It’s not right.”

The syringe is poised in his hand. “How so? It’s my body. I can tattoo it, pierce it, so why can’t I modify my DNA? I can cure my colour blindness and add vision into the ultra violet.”

“You won’t be you any more, not fully human.”

He just laughed.

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

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 on point of view.

“What if …”

You have to love any sentence that starts that way, don’t you? It conjures up delightful fairy tales and the deepest philosophy.

“… the whole universe is a story?” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “So who’s telling it?”

“Nobody. There’s no narrator or listeners. Only the story.”

That’s why I adored her. She lived in a different world; more magical, more complicated.

“Once I open the box, I know whether the cat is dead or alive. But you don’t know until I tell you,” she said

“Ha! So the observer exists and creates the tale.”

“Damn!”

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.

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 on point of view.