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 Charlotte  and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. alphabet 2. bookends 3. careful 4. devoted 5. gland 6. elegy 

and/or: 

1. fabulous 2. island 3. legend 4. mirror 5. yak 6. violent

Also including Charlotte's colour of the month: light ivory

Here is my story:

The ferry had left and the old man had finished loading all their luggage onto his big wagon, while the children had fed apples to his patiently waiting horse. He climbed onto his seat and gently slapped the reins to get old Harry started along the path and the three families followed behind, walking. 

The children were excited to finally be on this island which they had heard so much about over the years. Their parents had come here as children themselves, “we had such fabulous times every summer,” they’d said and the newest batch of children could hardly wait to get unpacked and start their own adventures.

When they reached the camping huts, the grownups were amazed at the difference. Every shack had been fixed up and painted and labelled with letters, A,B,C and so on with thirteen shacks on each side of the street. “Look Charlotte,” said her mum Eileen, “what do you see?”

“It’s a rainbow alphabet,” said Charlotte excitedly. She was very proud of recently learning all the letters, and the shacks were indeed a rainbow, with shack A being red, B being orange and so on down to the end which was a white shack opposite another white shack, then the colours began again coming back up the street, to finish with a purple Z.  Tall coconut palms at the end of each row formed bookends to the rainbows.

“Be careful walking near those palms” said the old man who had introduced himself as Jack. “Sometimes coconuts will drop without warning and you don’t want one landing on your head!” He unloaded all the luggage and left the parents to sort it all out and move into their assigned shacks. Beyond the street was a grassy area and beyond that was the beach with fine light ivory coloured sand

Permission had been obtained to build a campfire on the sand and Jack had promised to attend and tell them the legend of the island which included violent seas and beached pirates. “All of it true!” he declared. “I’ve lived here all my life, devoted my time to keeping things tidy and my great-great-grandfather was one of those pirates!”

With hopeful faces all the children asked, ‘is there any treasure here?” “Legend says there is,” said Jack, “but no one has ever found any. There’s a story about a rock shaped like a yak and something about a mirror showing the way when the sun is right.” “Let’s look for the yak rock,” said George and of course Tim and Barry agreed and wanted to go immediately, but the grownups called them back to unpack their things first.

“Responsibilities don’t end just because you are on holiday,” they said. Each family moved their suitcases into their shacks and unpacked clothes and supplies while the children danced with impatience in their hurry to stow away shirts and towels and bathing suits. “What are the two white shacks?” asked Emily. “One holds emergency supplies I think,” said her Dad, “Jack said something about them but I wasn’t paying proper attention. We’ll ask again later.”

“I was listening,” said Marian, “one has fishing supplies and a couple of small rowboats and scuba equipment and the other one has the emergency stuff like lanterns and medical equipment and a two-way radio and other stuff.”