Windflower

This was a flash fiction I wrote a year back.

 

Windflower

by Madi Leigh

 

A single, red anemone clung to the edge of a cliff. The wind tugged at its fragile stem, barely rooted in the dry, coarse soil.

An outdated car parked on the side of the dirt road, trailing the side of the mountain.  

A girl sat in the passenger side, motionless. She stared at the open sky and the drop of the cliff as if they tempted her. An older woman sat in the driver’s seat, her eyes squinting as they stared through round, metal glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

The car radio hummed a jazzy tune.

“I used to come here every day with your grandpa, an’ we’d dangle our feet off the edge. Diggin’ our hands into the dirt and watchin’ the wind blow it through our fingers.” She smirked, wrinkles creasing her cheeks.

She sat up and pointed at the sign next to their car that read, PLEASE DO NOT PICK THE FLOWERS.

The sign seemed useless because the cliff had obviously been devoured by greedy hands and wistful eyes.

She shook her finger at the sign. “We’d pick ‘em. When we’d get bored of the dirt, we’d tear off the petals, one by one, and watch them be carried off by the wind. They’d fly--fly, can you imagine?”

“Sounds kind of morbid if you think about it,” the young girl said.

The old woman shook her head. “Nah. They would fly.”

“Then the petals would fall, right? Down ‘til they met the ground. Thrown around by the harsh winds and torn up by the sharp rocks.” The young girl looked out of the window, leaning her head against the glass. “So, what’s the point?”

The wind roared, pulling the red anemone at the edge of the cliff harder. Tugging it. Taunting it.

“Your grandpa use’ to say that we were saving the flowers. That the flowers wanted to let gravity pull ‘em down, but the wind wanted to carry the flowers. Help ‘em fly and float ‘em safely to the ground.”

“The wind wanted to help the flowers? Who would believe that?” The young girl furrowed her eyebrows.

“Anyone who’s willing.” The old woman nodded. “So, we’d pick ‘em. Watch the wind take ‘em from our hands and watch as they’d fly.”

The roots of the red anemone loosened, losing its grip on the dry soil.

The young girl stared at the clouded, blue sky. “Do you really believe in that, grandma?”

“If he was willing,” her eyes locked onto the flower at the edge of the cliff, “then I am.”

A gust of wind whistled through the windows of the car.

The red anemone tore from the ground and swirled around as if it were playing tag with the wind. It danced in the air before gracefully floating towards the bottom of the canyon.

The old woman’s mouth twitched into a grin. “He is.”

 

 

Author's Note

This is an old piece. I'm wondering what works and what doesn't work. What makes this story good, and what makes it dull?

Reviews

[K writes]

I like the detail and imagery in your write, nicely written

[no tell writer]

This is really good, I really enjoyed this write