Welcome to ‘Flash Friday’ where every week I share some of my original flash fiction.
This week’s story was inspired by the writing prompt: ‘An unusual comet appeared, its tail pointing to…’
Usually I’ll scroll through a few different prompts before settling on one to work with, but this was actually the first and only one I looked at this week. It reminded me of the Hale-Bopp comet which was visible to the naked eye during most of 1996 and 1997, when I was aged 10 or 11. I remember it well and can still picture standing in my parents’ garden during the summer of 1997 (when it was at its brightest in the Northern Hemisphere), looking up at the night sky, amazed by what I saw.
It’s a shorter piece this week, just 266 words, and is a nice reminder that flash fiction can be anything up to 1,500 words (though with Flash Friday I am not as strict on that as I would be with a competition entry).
I hope you enjoy reading this one, and please leave a ‘like’ or a comment below if you’d like to share your thoughts - I’d love to hear what you think.
An unusual comet appeared, its tail pointing to the east. The last time she’d seen one, Amelie had been a little girl watching it from her grandparents’ back garden. Back then it had been the main topic of conversation in the playground: “You seen the comet yet?”; “What’s gonna happen to it?”; “It’s so cool!”
Thirty-odd years later, people didn’t seem so excited now which was sad. They’d lost their sense of wonder, keeping their eyes glued to their phones instead of looking up.
Amelie’s grandfather had been a keen amateur astronomer and she’d spent hours huddled up under a woollen blanket with him studying the night sky. Together, they had peered through his telescope and tried to find the elusive Man-in-the-Moon, and he’d told endless stories of the aliens living on Mars. She’d loved those night-time explorations, slowly learning the names of the constellations and distinguishing the planets from the stars. Those times with her grandpa had been so precious; him the teacher, her the student, and the entire heavens their reference book.
Sticking her earphones in and flicking her music onto her favourite gaming soundtrack, Amelie tugged the fringed blanket back around her shoulders and fitted her eye to the much-loved and well-used scope, its casing worn smooth through decades of handling. It was her most prized possession, with so many memories associated with it. Now, as she felt the kick in her ever expanding belly, she couldn’t wait to share the wonder of the stars with the next generation. She just wished her grandpa could share it with them too.
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