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onsdag den 26. maj 2021

Words for Wednesday - May 26

This May the Words for Wednesday are over at MessyMimi's Meanderings's blog. For today we were given:

love
ocean
savour
detail
charge
childlike
    and/or
last
broadcast
lick
system
crash
shocking

Remember to go back, read other peoples' stories there or follow their links back. And please place a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction.

These words had me back in time, and of course a story from the Unicorn Farm formed in my mind. We're back to one of the very first days, probably the third day for the apprentices at the Unicorn Farm. Oh and I took up my favourite additional challenge: Use the words in the order they were given.

Susan loved the smell of the ocean, and today the soothing breeze from the ocean drifted in through the open windows at the Unicorn Farm. She savoured the smell, while concentrating on what Jon was telling them. All the apprentices were gathered in the Barn, the small one man tables from the previous day were still there, and they sat in the same places as yesterday. Pencils and notebooks lay on a small neat stack in front of each of them. The subject-notebooks clearly marked with colours and symbols, but the personal notebook was as yet a non-descript grey. 
  Jon spoke of premonitions, which seemed to be a precursor of prediction, or maybe a thing in its own right. It was a bit confusing, she had always been taught that thinking things over, not following your heart or even worse your gut sense, was what brought you home. And here Jon stood, big, dark skinned and smiling, telling them all that premonitions, warnings and even predictions were real, were a part of life, and were important. Susan remembered Dad and his brothers smiling at Aunt Cleo's predictions of the future. Not to her face of course, but behind her back, or on the was home.
  "Apprentices," Jon said, "now that your magic has been awakened, you will remember details from earlier times. They might seem to jump out on you, loom larger than life or be inconsequential to you. I charge you now to think back. Find one instance where a premonition made you do something - or abstain from doing something - and where this choice had some sort of consequences. Nothing is too big or too small, nothing is too childlike. I just ask you to have an open mind. Nobody has to see what you wrote, if you would not like to share."   

  'Why did he need to talk this pompous-like' Susan thought to herself. 'Or maybe it was just the language spell ... ' It made it a bit hard to follow his train of thoughts, and furthermore, Susan was disinclined to believe in premonitions. Then she recalled how she and Mum almost always were ready to leave at the same time, how they started saying the same things, and how they tried not to do so because Dad laughed at them and said that they were worse than Aunt Cleo and her coffee grounds and cards.
  Then Susan's thoughts drifted back in time to the summer before this one. They were on their usual family holiday, travelling south by car. Dad as always trying to get the car radio broadcast the Danish news, and it always had him licked. And Mum as always chiding him for his Viking attitudes.
  They were somewhere mountainous, France she thought, or maybe Italy, sometimes she had a hard time remembering where the city, she had in mind were placed. They had been to both countries last summer. France, she thought, that was the most likely place, as it had been one of the first days.
  The small family was standing in line for a cable car when she was suddenly caught by a wave of panic. She did NOT want to enter one of the gondolas. Susan was not inordinately afraid of heights, nor did she normally shy away from these means of transportations, but in this case she was adamant.
  She sat down on a low wall, declaring: "Fine! Mom and Dad, you can go up there with Linda if you like, but I'll stay here waiting for you."
  "Don't you like cable cars?" Mum asked.
  "I don't mind them," Susan said, "but I'm not going up there today."
  "That cable system has been running for more than 100 years," Dad said in an impatient voice. "It's been recently inspected, as you can see from this poster. It will run for 100 more."
   "Might be," Susan said evenly. "But not with me on board."
  There was nothing doing. She had a case of the stubborns. In the end they all left the line and drove out of the small town heading for a bigger town and some lunch. As they left the village, the church bell stroke 12 noon, the bells sounding out a long and intricate carillon.
  Nothing more was spoken of this incident during the trip. They climbed church towers, visited dungeons and even crossed a foaming river on a dancing bridge.
  A day or two after their return home, Mum, who was sorting the mail having accumulated in their absence, came into the girls' room with a newspaper in her hand, white in the face.
"Susan," she said in a shaking voice. "That cable car you refused to get on, you remember?" Susan nodded. "It crashed. It is here in this old paper." She pointed to a small news article, no photos, only the simple news: "Tuesday the 25th of June at 12.15 the cable car to the summit in XXX (Susan did no longer recall the name of the city) met with an accident. One of the cables frayed and snapped, and all the gondolas fell to the ground. The number of dead and injured are yet to be determined, as victims were taken to different hospitals in the surrounding towns."
  Shocked to her inner being she realized that only her magic had kept her and her family from being in that accident. She grasped pencil and notebook and began writing.

7 kommentarer:

  1. Wow.
    I am so glad that her magic kept her and her family safe - and that her family listened. Many would not.

    SvarSlet
    Svar
    1. I'm happy that they did too. As always only the parts happening at Unicorn Farm are invented. The real life stuff is just that - real life. I had forgotten about it until I read the news of the cable car crash in Stresa. Then Mimi's words did the rest. I'm only not certain how many actually died in the crash I was not in - I can't find any old news about it - but I can still see that wall I sat on, in my mind's eye.

      Slet
  2. Oh, my! It's amazing. You had a gut feeling, and went with it, and it served you quite well.

    Thinking and sound reason are good, though if you have one of those moments where you just can't reason yourself into doing something, go with the gut.

    SvarSlet
    Svar
    1. Thank you for your kind words, and for understanding what I'm trying to say :D

      Slet
  3. Thank heavens for premonitions that saved her family. If only others had known or listened. Excellent story.

    SvarSlet
    Svar
    1. Thank you. I have tried finding the accident, as I can't, I think nobody actually died in it. There's a list over cable car accidents listed by number of deaths on Wikipedia. I can't find anything fitting time and place - luckily.

      Slet
  4. I wouldn't say Susan had a premonition or that it's magic, it may just be a gut feeling but it's more fun to think she did have some sort of magic to that feeling.

    Have a lovely day.

    SvarSlet

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