“Mama, what did you do in the Kingdom of the Sky?”
“I wandered”
“Lonely?”
“As a cloud, I was never lonely. Clouds are always clustering together, sharing gossip. The moon is lonely, sometimes. I would visit her and drink pale tea and tell her stories. When I was a star, I spent hours on the phone to my sisters. We would wave to each other across those vast distances.”
“What did you like best?”
“Being a cloud. I was close enough to see what was happening down on the earth. People would look up at me, children would give me shapes and stories. But I liked visiting the moon, too. I liked her sad music and her translucent biscuits. I liked to see her smile”
“Would you go again?”
“No. I’m your mama, my feet are firmly on the ground. Go to sleep now.”
A prosery piece for Lillian at dVerse. 144 words, including the quotation. This one is so famous I’m not going to insult you by picking it out!
Love this magical tale….and the sweet sweet ending. These words “her translucent biscuits.” I am smitten with. This whole post made me smile. Thank you, Sarah!
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Very sweet story
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Butter biscuits and cotton puffs, mingled with lunar antics; excellent flash-fiction, and killer ending. I see the child a a daughter.
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Translucent biscuits and moon-milk, this was lovely. I loved how you broke the phrase to interpret it a whole new way.
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Drinking tea with the moon, waving to star sisters across the sky – this is magical. Loved it.
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Excellent story! Cutting up the line was the only way to do it, and it worked beautifully.
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Oh, it was a tough line!
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There is no way that anyone in the English-speaking world would utter that phrase except as a joke.
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Sniggering. It’s not conversational, is it? Still, we got there. I find the prosery quite hard – some of the best poetry lines are the absolute worst for putting into a prose form. Not saying this is one of the best poetry lines, but it’s certainly lasted in people’s minds.
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Could be a conversation stopper if ever you used it 🙂 I’ve said this before, but the powers that be don’t get it, that poetry isn’t prose. The only lines of ‘poetry’ you can pass off as prose are the extremely prosaic ones. If the phrase is original, arresting and poetic, it will stick out because it’s in a prose piece and because they’re somebody else’s words. IMHO it would give much better results if we simply used the line of poetry as inspiration, not the backbone of the prose.
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“The moon is lonely, sometimes. I would visit her and drink pale tea and tell her stories”
My favourite line of your story.
OMG enjoyed your story soo much.
Much💜love
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How lovely!
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Delightful. A bedtime story worth telling every night.
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Agreed, and with a creative use of the prompt line.
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Most definitely!
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What a charming dialogue and such a clever way to break up the line. It was fun to picture those “translucent biscuits”. I really enjoyed this, Sarah.
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A great place that Kingdom of the Sky. Very friendly with good visits and stories. And tea and biscuits. I love the sweet bedtime story feel of this.
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Love this! Delightfully whimsical.
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AMAZING ~ you rocked this prompt, Sarah.
-David
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Thank you ☺️
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