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 Alex J. Cavanaugh and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. parachute 2. reindeer 3. shark 4. clay 5. ruins 

and/or: 

1. telescope 2. totem-pole 3. black 4. severed 5. surf.

Also including Charlotte's colour of the month: pearl opal green (or something close to it)

Here is my story:

I watched through my telescope as Duncan’s parachute opened and he aimed towards Reindeer Ravine, so called by us for the numbers of reindeer remains laying at the bottom of it. Thousands of them had either fallen or been driven over the edge so long ago that nobody remembered anything about it. We were adventurous “thrill seekers” Duncan and I, and we had spotted the ravine last month when flying our helicopter home a couple of days after the unfortunate attempt at surfing through shark-infested waters. We’d made it back to the beach without getting eaten, but then my pearlised opal-green surfboard had slipped while attaching it to the roof supports of our four-wheel drive and I got a nice concussion, so I couldn’t be joining in this latest adventure.

The parachute landed gently behind Duncan right at the edge of the ravine and I watched as he searched for markers to relay back to me so I could mark it on the map we were making. There were plenty of sturdy trees nearby, so he was able to hitch a rope to lower himself into the ravine. We were hoping he would be able to burrow through the piles of bones, some nearly black with age, and bring out just a small one from the bottom or close to it, to send to the lab for carbon testing. That would give us an estimation of age to kick off the research into the history of that general area. Duncan was hoping to be able to write a column for Time Magazine.

The two-way radio crackled as his call came in: “I’ve reached the bones Kate and some are very brittle, I’ll be here a bit longer than we thought, there’s no way to tell how deep they ravine actually is. I can see something carved and painted on the opposite side, looks like some kind of ancient totem pole, it might have marked an entrance to a cave or something, could possibly be a site for ruins of things like clay pots. The marker doesn’t look like any Native American totem poles I’ve seen, this is carved right from and into the cliff face. If I can get to the other side next time, we may be able to follow it all the way down. And one more thing Kate, the bones here aren’t complete skeletons, many have had the heads severed and the skulls are all tossed to one side.”