Good morning everyone. I hope your week is going well. Mine has been slow paced and mostly indoors due to the weather. But On the other hand I have gotten a surprising about done. Which isn’t bad. So let’s jump into our midweek prompt and see what comes out. Fifteen minutes on the timer please and let’s get started.
I like the set up. No idea where it is going, but I do like the set up.
Wednesday, September 2nd: She smelled smoke in the air.
She smelled smoke in the air. This deep into the summer that was never a good thing. The woods and grass were tinderbox dry by this point in the summer. The expected rains hadn’t come, somehow passing them by when they should have alleviated matters. Lower down the rain fell. It fell hard and caused flooding.
‘Washing out roads.’ She reminded herself.
She inhaled deeply. If the smoke was from a wildfire then getting out quickly would be difficult. She looked to the sky but saw no smoke rising into the air. She merely smelled it on the wind. ‘Maybe the wind is carrying someone one else’s fire.
Other fires were possible. Lots of folks around here, to the extent that there were lots of folks, burned their trash rather than have someone collect it. Collection was an added expense, made more so because there were so few who paid for it that there was an extra fee attached for the privilege. Most burned what they could and then hauled the rest down to dumpsters in town.
Sometimes those arrangements were formalized. Other times they were done on the sly. ‘More so recently,’ she thought as she went back inside. There had been a burn ban out for more than a month. She thought it was closer to six weeks but she have to check the wall calendar to be certain. Days had a tendency to slip past her when she was occupied by a project.
She’d been knee deep in this one for nearly three weeks.
‘And not everyone pays attention to the bans.’ It was how they ended up with a wildfire that blazed down the mountain about eight years back.
She went back inside and after closing the door moved straight to the radio. Shile she had most of her music digitally these days, if only because it was easier to transport than any other form and stored well in the not so large house, the radio was tuned to the local news station. The news was, on most days, just local gossip. When she needed to escape her own thoughts she would tune in and hear the exploits of the town.
They made a pass at stating some of the actual news from the world beyond but she was just as likely to get an update on Mr. Wilson’s escaped pot bellied pig as she was news of the world beyond. She was fairly certain the pig and the swath of destruction it cut through the neighboring gardens on it’s many jaunts through town was viewed as much more important than any news of the outside world.
Many world events were temporarily interrupted when someone called in to tell Mr. Wilson that Princess was in their gardens and he needed to come get her.’
Despite the adventures of Princess, she knew that if there was a fire it would shove all news to the side. Everyone knew as well as she did that with the recent flooding many roads were impassable. Some people would need to go the long way round and any fire would be watched with an eye to calling an evacuation. She clicked on the radio, trying to decide if she would need to get packed and out.
Ten til Midnight 