Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write, a story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Margaret Adamson and friend and can be found here.

This week's words are in fact two pictures and here they are included in my story:

Elfrida walked slowly across the untended field to face the small stone building. "This must be it," she said to herself. "It fits the description and it's in the right area."

"It's prettier than Aunt Nellie said, there weren't any flowers then and she did say it was a gloomy rainy day."

She sat on a large stone and thought about what Aunt Nellie had said. "We were gypsies back then and some of us had started to settle in small towns instead of travelling, we wanted our children to go to schools and have doctors available when we got sick. But Grampy Jack kept to the old ways. He camped in Samuel Wilson's field, but Sam had died and his son Peter didn't want gypsies camping there anymore. He wanted to sell the field, greedy for money he was. Grampy Jack refused to leave, he only wanted to be there a day or two anyway. But Peter got enraged and told Grampy if he wanted to be in the field then he could just stay there forever. Hit him and knocked him out and dragged him to the old stone hut and locked him in. It used to be a jail building until one was built closer to town, so there was no way Grampy Jack could get out. Anyway, Peter went to town and got drunk that day and forgot all about Grampy Jack. When the family got around to looking for him, it was too late, Grampy had died in there. Peter confessed to what he did and got sent to prison for a while."

"Why don't I remember any of that?" said Elfrida. "You were just a baby," said Aunt Nellie, "and it wasn't spoken of very much. Jack was the last of the travellers and the old ways got left behind after he died. Word has got around though, about a raven that lives in the trees around that field. Jack always did want to come back as a bird and some say the raven is him."

All of this whirled around in Elfrida's head as she gazed at Grampy Jack's last 'home'. "Are you really still here?" she asked. "Are you free to fly now?"

The cawing of a raven answered and Elfrida turned to see a large black raven standing beside the only flower in the whole field. A red poppy, her favourite flower.