Morning and welcome to April and a Monday. Hope you don’t fall for too many pranks today. It seems kind of rude to prank on a Monday, even if it is April 1st. But there you have it. So before we have to look out for pranks why don’t we start with the morning prompt. Timers set and off we go.
I like the bits of contrast but I think I would have to write a bit further, possibly figuring out what the main character overhears before I decide what the story is actually about.
Monday, April 1st: It is just a little bit farther.
|It is just a little but farther,” he said. He smiled. I tried to smile back but was too busy trying to catch my breath. I feared it came off as a grimace. He turned and continued up the incline. His well-worn hiking boots barely dislodged a single bit of stone, his steps sure and even. My steps seemed to dislodge nothing but scree, round little pebbles sliding under my feet each time I moved them, making my balance off.
All of the others were ahead of me. They made it up the rocky slope and were no doubt relaxing and enjoying themselves. I watched Heath disappear around the slight curve at the top of the incline, view of him now blocked by a tree. I was alone on the trail. Rather than feel abandoned I took a moment to stop, catch my breath and allow myself a breather unobserved.
Thus far the motto of the group seemed to be ‘thou shalt not stop until the end’. Anytime I paused to breathe or even to enjoy the view I was given the side eye and a disappointed look. The fact that there had been some stunning views that I couldn’t help but pause to admire, even when my breath was not labored, didn’t seem to matter. I was holding them back. I was slowing them down.
Not for the first time I wondered why they came on these hikes if they didn’t actually enjoy the hike. If all they were after was the physical exertion, a gym would have served them better. I had been on hikes before, many times in fact. They had never been like this. They were sojourns into nature and the whole point was to take some time to be in nature, to appreciate it and refresh yourself with the natural world, escaping the man-made one for a while.
I had not been expecting it to be a race.
And then there was this hill. I was relatively in shape until you gt me on a steep incline. Then my left knee decided that it was going t remind me of the injury t managed to heal. The injury had been a little over a decade past now, but when the incline was too much or had cone on for too long, my knee liked to grumble, to remind me of all it had been through.
Right now it was sore, nothing worse. Taking a moment to breathe and let it rest was the right thing to do for me. The fact that it let me catch my breath was another bonus. I was kind of annoyed that I was breathing so heavily in the first place. My annoyance was with the others and not my body. To keep up, the pace had been much faster than I expected and there were little to no breaks.
If the hike had been less a race, then I doubted I would have gotten out of breath. Giving myself a few moments to calm my breathing, steady myself, helped. My knee was less twitchy and my lungs were no longer burning. I continued on, this time the ground behaving and no longer threatening to trip me. I reached the curve and before walking around it, I heard their voices.
Ten til Midnight 