Friday, October 12, 2012

Friday Fictioneers: "Oasis"

It's time for Friday Fictioneers again!  I like to take a look at the photo prompt when it comes out on Wednesday and then just meditate on it a bit.  On a walk yesterday I imagined a setting in Mexico with a chihuahua and a cat and a bird, but by this morning when I looked again it became something different.

As always, I welcome feedback, including suggestions and impressions and approbations. :-)




Oasis

Hard-baked, blinding white, chalky air, throbbing heat. Where has she brought me, my archaeologist love? She promised Rome on the way, just one day—we scattered pigeons on the square, craned our necks in the Pantheon as rain misted down on us, and I gasped at the art.

Now in Tunisia it is only the oppressive heat, never mind that it’s almost easy to kick up a Roman coin on one of the old roads. But I have a plant on the roof, and I found a can of blue paint for the door, so I’m sheltered here.

99 words

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's how I felt when my love brought me to Texas! And there was no Rome on the way, either. Have you been to Tunisia? This story has the ring of truth, certainly.

Anonymous said...

"Hard-baked, blinding white, chalky air, throbbing heat." These words sum up the scene, and the lover's mood, so well.

Cindy Marsch said...

Markets,I have friends who visited Tunisia a couple of years ago with another friend who is an archaeologist/historian, and I have made the trip vicariously through them. My dad once described the feel of the Pantheon in Rome, and my friends did pick up Roman coins on the road, but I think it might have been in Rome, actually! In Tunisia and other out-of-the-way places the ruins are more pristine, not such tourist traps.

Thank you, too, for your comment, Sarah!

janet said...

Very real and well done! I love the first line. My sympathies are with this guy but there I'm sure there's plenty to see, although more than one day in Italy would have been nice.

Anonymous said...

Hi Cindy,
After our summer with 18 days or 100 or above temps, I can appreciate the need for shelter from the heat. Ron

Lora said...

Interesting story. Feels real. Tunisia is not a place I would want to live or visit (to find coins or dig for artifacts). I would fight to stay in Rome. Nice work.

Sandra Crook said...

He sounds happy enough with his lot; hope he stays that way. Nice one.

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields said...

Could feel the heat. Put me in mind of visiting Solomon's mine in Israel. I stayed on the air-conditioned tour bus.
Good story, Cindy.

billgncs said...

Ah... the things we do for love. But adventure comes in all manner of ways.

I enjoyed the images it paints.

Anonymous said...

Sacrifices are acceptable as long as we have protection from the evil eye by a blue door.

Unknown said...

One day in Rome, that's very nice and so hard to beat...must be very hard to be in such a hot country. Mine is here
Have you a ROCKING AND BLESSED WEEK!!!
hugs
shakira