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. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

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 to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Hilary Melton-Butcher and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. brick 

2. fully 

3. carapace 

4. hessian 

5. snowdrop 

6. grizzly 

and/or: 

1. illustrator 

2. violet 

3. ailment 

4. twigs 

5. eureka 

6. dinkum

here is my story:

(continuing on from last week:)

The following week, I went with Terry to the Farmer’s Market. He’d been a little too excited all week and I wondered what it was he wasn’t telling me. I knew about the Art Stall, so it couldn’t be that. I knew too, that Khoral Kai was likely to be there and he was always such fun to talk to, the way he could spin a tale kept you fully involved and before you knew it an hour had passed. Sometimes two. I realized I had been missing this experience by staying home so often. One minor ailment or another had kept me housebound for too long.

As we walked along the brick path to the market entrance I could see Terry rubbing his hands (with glee?) as he did whenever I was in for a big surprise. And what a surprise it turned out to be. The owner of the Art Stall was none other than Sonia Jenssen! We’d been to school together and her paintings always got higher grades than mine. She had become a well-known illustrator of children’s books and after retiring, her equally talented daughter Katrina had taken her place with that book company.

We hugged and kissed amid tears of joy at the reunion, then she asked me to forgive Terry for keeping it quiet, it had been her idea to surprise me. Terry waved to me as he set off on his usual round of the stalls, promising to come and get me at lunchtime. Sonia pulled a couple of chairs from the back of her stall and we sat to do some catching up gossip. “But first,” she said, “I’d like to know what you think of my newest style?”

Sonia retrieved a couple of frames with hessian stretched over them and showed me fields of snowdrops and violets nestled within long grasses. “I’ve been using twigs dipped in paint to make the differently shaped stems for those trees in the backgrounds, what do you think Molly?”

I loved them of course, everything Sonia painted turned out terrific. “I had a “Eureka” moment after I dropped a twig on some paper that was still wet with background colour.” “It worked out great,” I said, “the trunks looked like gnarled old olive trees.” “Really? That’s exactly what I thought! Fair dinkum, Molly, you always did understand me.”

We chatted for quite a while as Sonia showed me all the things she was selling and I asked about tubes of watercolour paint, saying I was going to start painting again myself. “That’s wonderful!,” she said. “Any idea what you will try first?” I mentioned daffodils, as I had always been good at those and asked about canvases, did she have any that weren’t too big and not too small, an easy size to manage on a table easel.

“Well of course I do,” she said, selling me two that were a smidge larger than a dinner plate and a set of brushes to go with the tubes of paint I had selected. I looked at my watch then, wondering where Terry might be. I was getting a little hungry and I knew that he was like a grizzly after hibernation if he got too hungry. I spied him weaving his way towards me and he had Khoral Kai in tow!  Both were carrying covered baskets and as they drew near I saw the baskets were actually the upturned carapaces of two large sea turtles, with woven cane handles.

They had brought lunch to us and we picnicked at the side of Sonia’s Stall after she put up a ‘Closed For An Hour’ sign that she had painted herself. I learned that she was only here for the season, needing to be home by the end as her daughter would be going back to work after her own holiday and Sonia was living right next door to watch the children after school and on weekends.