A short piece written this morning for Friday Flash.<\/p>\n
The old man and his wife sat around the dinner table, talking quietly. It was a scene they had repeated day after day, month after month, year after year. They had lived in this house for almost their entire lives, farming the small open areas of land around it, each year begging the wan sun and the hard ground to give them enough food to live.<\/p>\n
\tTheir children had long since abandoned their parents, leaving the home and going on to better things in other towns, other cities, places where there was more for the young and energetic, and so the old couple lived on their own. Once, they had made the trip to the nearest store, but the store had closed down and they no longer stepped outside of their fields. Their world had shrunk to a small bubble, a little sphere in the landscape that comprised their house, their fields, and nothing else.<\/p>\n
\tOften, a week would pass without either of them speaking, for they knew each other so well by now that no words needed to be said. Between them, a look or a glance contained an entire conversation. The sharecroppers acted as if they were one mind in two bodies, knowing exactly where to place their hands when fixing machinery, clothing, anything. The farm and its belongings were like their bodies: they wore it well, even if it was a little old and shabby by now.<\/p>\n
\tWhat they did not speak about, and likely could not, was the coming realization that they had become very old, and that one day soon, one of them would pass away. Each knew that the other could not run the farm on their own, and that no one would come to help. Because of this, there was a small pouch tucked away behind the bed, filled with specially made tranquillizer. When the time came, they would lay down to sleep in the same bed, and that would be the end of it.<\/p>\n
\tEvery day and night, they would find their eyes turning to the sky, looking for the signs that used to rive the heavens. Once, the massive plumes of smoke had been a constant source of delight for them, and they would stop and pause in their daily labours to watch the columns of fire and smoke on the far horizon. They no longer appeared, and on the day they had ceased, the old man and his wife had gathered around the radio, listening to the announcements. Then they had switched the radio off, unplugged it from the wall, and moved it out to the storage shed. It was of no further use to them.<\/p>\n
\tThey looked around at the red earth and the sullen sky, and the thin plastic sphere that held in their air and water, and the couple held one another and sighed. Earth had given up its plans for Mars, and left its colonists there to die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A short piece written this morning for Friday Flash. The old man and his wife sat around the dinner table, talking quietly. It was a scene they had repeated day after day, month after month, year after year. They had lived in this house for almost their entire lives, farming the small open areas of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-22","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":247,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":0},"title":"The State of the Land","date":"August 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Originally, this website was set up to help promote Tarranau and Chloddio, my upcoming novels in The Four Part Land. Since then, it has become much more than that, a forum for the Writer's Carnival, and for the flash fiction that I write weekly. The Four Part Land itself has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chloddio"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":415,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=415","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":1},"title":"The Village","date":"January 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The second of three stories I wrote last night in my return to flash fiction after a month or two off. The bell rang, a single peal loud and long across the valley. A low sound, a mournful sound, it sent the birds scattering from their perches, and the womenfolk\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":389,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=389","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":2},"title":"Today Is A Good Day","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I have finished National Novel Writing Month as a winner, at 50700 words done for the month after the validation tool made me write another 700 to complete. That means I have done 86,000 words in two months, which is where Laeccan Waters sits today. I'm going to take a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":543,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=543","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":3},"title":"Hum and Interview","date":"August 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So, you may have noticed I had a sale on last weekend. Well, Jim Bronyaur was kind enough to interview me, and talk to me about sales, selling ideas, and ebook pricing. Wander over to see what I thought, then come back for the #FridayFlash. The hum lived, and silence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=372","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":4},"title":"Born of a Broken Land","date":"November 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Had a sudden burst of flash fiction inspiration. Yes, I should have been writing NaNo (I didn't today), but I'll cope. Hope you like it. The earth split apart, and the seas rushed in, and where once there had stood fertile land, now no sounds could be heard but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":398,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=398","url_meta":{"origin":126,"position":5},"title":"Forever Free","date":"December 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"And upon a hill stood a moonlit guardian, bathed in eternal night. It was marble, of a certain hue, weathered and old. Where an arm had once reached into the sky there was nought but a broken stump, and the arm was nowhere to be found. The statue had lived\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}