Welcome to a piece of Wednesday Word’s flash fiction on Darkling Dreams!
A good friend of mine, P.T. Wyant, is doing a blog post every Wednesday called Wednesday Words with a new prompt for a bit of flash fiction writing, just to get in the habit of writing something, anything. (Even if said flash fiction is complete garbage at the time. Garbage is better than nothing though, right?) If you’re looking for some inspiration yourself or just something to aimlessly write, then go check out her blog for this week’s prompt!
With that being said, I am going to share what I came up with for this week’s flash fiction prompt based off a three word combination prompt. So here is my very rough around the edges minute of inspiration based off her prompt. I’d love to hear what you guys think of it!
(Please excuse any errors you may see, I said it was rough around the edges.)
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Prairie Birth
The wagon wheels creaked as he halted the two chestnut horses. “Hang on, honey,” he murmured, getting up and hopping off. He hurried around the back of the wagon to her side, taking her hand and gingerly helping his wife down.
Halfway down she winced and hunched over, nearly falling. He caught her and held her against his chest as he started carrying her towards the lone prairie house.
“I got ya.”
Her hand rested over her stomach, breathing deeply as she tried to quell the surging waves of pain and kicking. Once they reached the door of the cabin, he set her down on her feet but kept an arm around her waist, holding her against him.
“Just breathe… Keep breathing,” he tried to instruct as he pounded hard upon the door. “Hello! Is anyone home?!” He pounded again on the door, glancing towards the soft light glowing within the closest window to him. “Please!”
“Jack…” she moaned, faltering.
His grip around her waist tightened a fraction. “Just hang on… Hello!” The door shook with the force of his pounding now.
“Who’s there?!” a male voice from within yelled.
“Please, we need help. My wife, she’s in labor and we had not yet reached the next town when it set in. Please, open the door. She needs a bed and I… I do not know how to deliver a baby!”
He heard a quick exchange of voices within before the door swung open and an older couple faced him. The weathered husband held a rifle in his hand while he stood behind his plump wife. They eyed the pair as light washed over their figures. The wife’s eyes landed upon his expectant wife and widened.
“Goodness gracious! Herald, go clear the extra bed and gather me lots of towels, hot water, and the herbs from the cupboard. Quickly.” She shooed her husband off who set down the rifle and did exactly as she told him to. “Come. Come in.”
“Thank you. Thank you so kindly, ma’am.” Jack breathed in relief as the woman helped them inside and shut the door with her foot, leading them to the bed and settling Colleen down. He stood back awkwardly out of the way, watching worriedly. His wife had a vice grip on his hand.
Herald soon came hurrying back with all the elderly woman had asked for, arms laden with the stuff as he set it to the side of her and looked up at Jack. “This your first?” Jack nodded stiffly and the man smiled reassuringly. “No need to worry. The first is always the hardest. Martha here knows what she is doing, you’re in good hands with your wife.”
He tipped his hat in appreciation. “I’m much obliged.”
Martha dabbed at Colleen’s forehead and hushed her gasps of pains, then rolled up her sleeves as she got ready to work. “Alright, dear, you just follow my instructions, the both of you, and pretty soon you’ll have your firstborn in your arms wailing away. I could do this in my sleep.”
Colleen gave a timid smile laced with pain and glanced at her husband. Oh how she hoped that was true.
Now you can find this flash fiction work and others on my profile on Wattpad! Click here for my profile and go dive into a sea of Shards of Imagination!
Also, as I work to play catch up from my latest computer crash, I will be posting the Shards of a prompt I missed from May and June directly to Wattpad each week. That means two Shards every week! Those old prompts will not be posted to my blog so if you wish to see the old one of the week, you’ll have to hop on over to my profile on Wattpad.
Since I’ve been focusing on a project with a deadline and work, the next oldest Shard has not yet gone up on Wattpad yet. I know I was supposed to have the final two catch up Shards done and posted to Wattpad before this but some things got the front burner in the past week. There will be news on that in Friday’s post! *Squee* Hopefully next week I’ll at least have one of the catch up Shards up.
Darkling Dreams 