And just like that it is February. Somehow my brain always switches into spring mode when I see February. At the moment I am reminded that I haven’t put my seed order in for the garden yet. while it is still a while before i will plant anything out of doors, I need to start a few seeds in the small greenhouse. I always feel very pretentious when i say that. My green house is basically a book case with a raincoat, but it does a bang up job getting my seeds started. I just have to get around to ordering and then planting them. Still that is a thought for later today though. For now it is the morning writing prompt. Are you read? Good, then let’s begin.
I have no idea where he is or how he got there but a part of me really wants to find out. I’ll have to think about it.
Wednesday, February 1st: Candles flickered.
Candles flickered. There was a draft somewhere. The sight of the flames bending brought both relief and panic. He didn’t want the candles to go out. It was the last thing he wanted, without them the darkness would be complete. But he needed to find a way out, he needed some indication of which direction to go.
Although the candles provided him some measure of comfort the candlestick was only three pronged and the trip of candles were grouped in tight formation as they rose from the top of a sculpted silver bullfrog. He wasn’t certain why someone would choose to make a candle holder with three candles rising from the top of the bull frog’s head. When he first say it, he thought it looked like the poor frog had simply been impaled through the skull with them. Now, as the only source of light he felt the warty indentations of the faux skin of the silver frog embed their pattern in his flesh. He was gripping the frog so tightly he was certain his hand would be forever more textured.
The tight grouping of the candles meant that there was only a small circle of light around him, leaving the vast darkness to press heavily from all sides. He took a deep breath and held it looking at the flames. The candles rose in straight flames. Slowly he turned. He moved the candle slowly but steadily inch by inch, pausing after each movement to see if the breeze came again. He tried to keep the candle as far away from his body as he could so that he would not block the breeze from the candle flame.
He turned and their flames began to lean back. He stopped. The breeze, slight though it was, was coming from directly in front of him.
“Please don’t be a hole in the floor,” he muttered to himself as he slid a foot forward, making sure the floor in front of him was sound before he trusted his weight to it. The stones of the floor remained stable. He shifted his weight forward and brought his back foot up to his front on. He again slipped a foot forward. He never lost contact with the ground and tapped around a bit with his tow to make sure that it was stable before trusting his weight to it.
Earlier he was less careful and nearly fell into unknown depths as the rock gave way beneath his feet. He wasn’t going to risk such a fall again if he could help it.
“This was so not what I planned,” he said as he slowly eased his way forward. His gaze darted from his foot to his candle. He could see little of the floor but it still looked like carved blocks of stone. It was gray with slightly darker lines where one stone connected to another. The light was still bending slightly with the breeze. It was blowing slow and steady. It wasn’t enough to cause the candles too much damage. He didn’t think they were in danger of blowing out just yet.
He assumed there was some sort of ceiling above him, but the candle’s illumination was not strong enough to show it to him. He wished desperately that he could see it as he had an irrational fear of something falling out of the darkness and on to him. He wasn’t sure where the fear came from but there it was. He heard no sounds from above, no scratching or clawing, but because he couldn’t see, he had the fear.
To keep the fear at bay he thought of all the things he was going to say to Fred when he finally got out of this. After all it was Fred’s fault that he was even here.
Ten til Midnight 