Writing Challenge ~ February 2013

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ FEBRUARY 2013​

New month. New challenge. As it’s Valentine’s Day in a fortnight, all of the prompts have a ‘love’ theme and because here it’s known as friendship day, I’ve been extra friendly and found four, yes four, prompts!


You can involve the prompts themselves in your piece and make your links to the prompts as obvious or as subtle as you like or use them simply as inspiration for something else. You can use part of the prompts, just one aspect of one image, or use one in its entirety. There’s also nothing to stop you using more than one prompt per piece!

The word limit for this month’s challenge is 1,250 words and your submission can take whatever form you desire – poetry or prose, complete story or a vignette. Erotic or not, serious or light hearted, it’s whatever you want it to be!!

It’s your writing, your challenge. You write whatever you’re inspired to write! Be it one piece or several!

Post only your submissions in this thread, constructive comments and reviews are to be posted in the appropriately named – Writing Challenge Review Thread

The deadline for this month’s challenge is Sunday 24th February 2012, to allow readers time to get through everything before the next challenge starts!

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.
Happy writing!

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There is a forest, deep in the heart of the wild country. It is called the Forest of Lost Love. It is said that all the trees bear red fruit, have red leaves, even the bark of them is ruddy and rich with crimson sap. The rivers flow calm and clear, save the carmine hue the waters take, seeming like blood thinned by water more than water tinted with blood. There are no animals to speak of. It is a silent wood, but every so often, it is said that the laments of lost love cry out across the expanse of trees and moss, dripping dew that resembles blood.

Not many would wander so deep into the wood, not with the wild beasts that ravage travelers, but he was never so concerned with the safety of the journey. It took weeks; he was lost for a good deal of time amidst the greens and browns of the forests that surrounded this place, but eventually he burst through a copse of vines and there it was.

He stood at the edge of the Forest, breathing in the air. Even it seemed tinged with the red and maroon, a fine mist shimmering as the sun filtered through the thickest of the trees highest boughs.

He wandered about, the reverie of finding this place that few thought was even real taking over his mind. He touched the trees, wiping at their bark and leaves, just to see if the red had really sunken into every aspect of the Forest. And he found it to be true. The waters of the stream that ran the length of the Forest were his next destination. Staring down into the cool current, he could see himself tinted crimson. It was surreal, kneeling there and seeing himself as though soaked in blood. His heart suddenly felt heavy, and he knew that it must be the spirit of this place, the forlorn soul of some lingering love tugging at his heartstrings.

He stood and made his way back to the path he had created upon entering. Before he could leave, he heard a soft voice whisper. It was right in his ear, though no one could possibly have gotten that close without him noticing.

"Please, don't leave me. I love you. Please, stay with me..."

He turned and saw then, the true nature of the Forest. The piles of bones that littered the Forest floor, the writhing tendrils that stayed mostly out of view. This Forest was not of love lost, but rather stolen.

And though he knew the truth, he could not depart. He exhaled and walked back into the heart of the Forest and lost his love, and life, to it as so many other men had.

The arctic winds howled making each day grow darker than the last. We were isolated on the fields of war with snow the only resource in high supply. Morale, much like food, was being whittled down that soon the knife would strike the hand holding the wood. It was there in a frozen nightmare that I became captivated by a face that would never find an equal. Her eyes a shade of brown I had not known before, yet a black, leather uniform I knew all too well.

While the war waged on for months, radio reports were that this night, Valentine's Day of all nights, the commanders were ordered to cease fire due to a possible end to the senseless battle we were immersed in.

In the field between opposing sides, an abandoned farmer’s fence ran along side a shallow, dried up creek adorned with towering trees, bare branches stretching up into the oblivion of the snowy sky. A ghostly figure moved closer to the fence, a couple hundred feet away. The dark outline of a jet black uniform contrasted against the snow behind it holding a white flag assembled from tattered undershirts. I looked in awe as the body trudged through the pure white snow I had come to loathe more each morning. The enemy stood waving their patchwork sign of surrender.

The entire company was engrossed in this change of scenery. Our commander ordered me, the youngest and most green of soldiers, to go out and see what they wanted. Apprehensive and a bit scared for my life, I approached … her? My icy demeanor toward those on the opposite side of the fence began to melt the closer I drew to … her. A smooth, gentle face was framed by charcoal fur. Her eyes were a shade of brown that made an autumn tree jealous. She showed little emotion, save that marvelous dark dyad, in which I saw a woman who grew tired of the fight, had seen too many corpses and was weary from being on this meaningless plot of land as much as I was.

A fence separated my body from hers; in my mind, she was already mine.

I stood saying not a word with what might have ranked in the top five of the most dumbfounded stares in history. Her voice would echo in my dreams and nightmares. "We are low on supplies as we know you are too. The roads are impassible in this storm. We will not fire back unless fired upon. Agreed?"

An ever-so-slight smirk arose from her soft, pink lips which set my mind and heart ablaze. She turned around and walked back to her comrades, a sense of grace about her gait despite a few inches of snow. My eyes could not help but look down and notice her slender figure through the layers that tried to mask it. Taking a few seconds longer to linger than I should have, I returned to my CO, my heavy, steel toed boots feeling like they had taken on wings.

After a few moments of discussion, I was sent off with another message. Before heading back, I needed to, had to do something for her. I had one piece of beef jerky left in my rations, which I had been planning on trading. I wrapped my gift in the military grade plastic it came in and headed out to the fence again. A few moments after I set out, I saw her glide through the storm and make her pilgrimage to our second date.

"Hello ... we agree … and this is for you," I said with as much sincerity as my chattering teeth could muster. My present was met with a puzzled look as she allowed it to drop into her mitten. She peaked inside and a giggle so euphonious rose above the incessant winds as she said matter-of-factly, "I'm a vegetarian." My eyes sank down into a well of despondency. She placed her hand over mine on the fencepost. I looked up and climbed the well, bare handed as her huge grin turned night into day. She gently responded, "thank you ... I can finally get some toilet paper with this." I smiled back, said she was more than welcome and she started to depart. Quietly, in a hushed tone I said "wait." That soft voice spun her around as I asked, "can I at least know the name of the woman whose eyes have no equal and whose voice I will never forget?" Her face slowly rose up, which I wished nothing more than to run my bare fingers across on her pale colored cheek. Her same cute smirk adorned it as she said, "Teresa. And of the man whose words sends more shivers down my body than this weather?"

As I smiled and opened my mouth, a rumbling of tanks closed in quickly from our left. It did not matter whose side the rolling armor was on, only that they sped in, crunching the snow beneath their massive weight. Both startled, we looked at each other knowing our respite in this field of chaos was over. We ran towards our own lines. A shot from a tank was aimed at us, more on our side than theirs, impacting the ground 20 feet from where I was running. The blast threw me back into the fence as I collapsed in a slump of human disarray.

"NOOOO!!!" her voice rang out, over the incoming barrage and grinding tank treads. Her fingers reached down to grab my arm as my strongest voice grew faint, "David". I was lost in her tear filled eyes, her mouth moving yet I could not hear as darkness settled over me.

What would turn out to be almost a day later, I opened my eyes surrounded by white, only this time it was hospital linens instead of snow. My first reaction was to look down and see most of what remained of the left side of my body wrapped in bandages. It hurt to move my head or any other part for that matter, but I was glad to be alive. The doctors and nurses all told me what had happened, but none of it mattered to me.

Teresa. Her voice sang in my heart.

Teresa. It echoed in my mind.

Teresa. The mention of her name drew both joy and longing.

I listen for her. My heart stirs when I hear the name as it always will.

Our fate would deal us cards that night,
O filled with snow and freezing fright.
Yet love would not come up in spades;
My thoughts of you, they cannot fade.

Teresa