The boy was quiet when he told them.  His chin was held determinedly high over the brand new Church soldier’s uniform, and his face was a mixture of resolve and apology for the shock he was giving them.

It was almost enough to make the old man laugh despite it all.  They had been headed here all the boy’s life.  Longer — ever since the moment his daughter had led an Eastern mercenary in the door.  He might never forgive Dyan for marrying Ellin then dying on that pointless campaign, but he’d seen that coming the way he’d seen this coming.  Inevitable.  It had been in every line of the boy from the time he was six, an uncanny anticipation of the soldier now before him.

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She stood in the dusty parking lot, the peeling wooden door before her.  The warm glow coming through the bar windows seemed to beckon, a welcoming yellow that spoke of candlelight and the hearth.  Behind her, the unlit road stretched, featureless, into the dark.  She couldn’t remember how she had gotten there.  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

She pulled the door open.  The bar was empty but for the man behind the counter, and instead of stale beer, there was a faint whiff of incense.  She sighed.

“Is this another one of those damn allegorical bars?”

The bartender looked up from wiping a pint glass with a striped bar towel –when did real bartenders ever do that? — and nodded.  “You got yourself into a pretty bad accident,” he said with a lift of the eyebrow.  “What did you expect?”

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He stood quietly, wind ruffling his hair, and watched her crush the talisman to powder.  The crunch of it under her boot was unnaturally loud, and this deserted corner at the edge of the city felt like the ends of the earth.

“You’re that sure.”

She didn’t even spare him a glance.  Her gaze was intent on the sparkling dust on the concrete, and a deep satisfaction showed on her face.  She spotted a thumbnail-sized fragment that had escaped destruction and hastened to remedy the situation, grinding it under her heel until what was left was lifted by the wind and blown away.

His hand lifted involuntarily to his own talisman, reassuringly safe and whole in his hip pocket.  “You’ll never be able to go back.”  He knew that she knew, that it was the whole point of the thing, but the words spilled out all the same.

She lifted her eyes to his, and they sparkled with an honest delight that he hadn’t seen in years.  “Never.”  Inexplicably, she gurgled a laugh, grabbed his hand, and pulled him off toward the city.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word CRUSH (verb):

1a : to squeeze or force by pressure so as to alter or destroy structure <crush grapes>
b : to squeeze together into a mass
2   : hug, embrace
3   : to reduce to particles by pounding or grinding <crush rock>

Thanks for reading!

The witch finished the incantation and held her breath for a long moment, waiting.  A gust of icy wind swept past the candles ringing her living room, and a hollow voice sounded.  “Who summons me?”  A figure stepped out of the shadows into the circle of flame.

The witch’s eyes widened.  Tall and bony she had been expecting.  Dark flames in the eye sockets, check.  And okay, the grimoire hadn’t actually said there’d be black robes and a scythe, but this…  It was wearing a white wifebeater and a baseball cap — backward. A shiny black button shirt was slung over its shoulder, and the waistband of a pair of striped shorts protruded from the top of the jeans.  She couldn’t keep herself from reading it.  Abercr–  She shook herself.

“You’re kidding me.”

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A clatter sounded from the other end of the room, cutting through the din.  Callie’s head jerked.  One of the other servants had dropped a charger of roast pig spectacularly on the floor.  She turned back to the table and filled another goblet.  These Atan loved their wine.

She brushed a sleeve.  Murmuring an apology, she withdrew.  She wasn’t at all sure they understood her, but it hardly mattered.  She kept her head down, and they ignored her.  She was happy to be nothing.

The duke sat at the head table by the guest of honor.  He was uneasy in his cousin’s seat, so newly come to him.  It was a very different gathering than the ones the old duke had used to have, these minor nobles in ill-fitting Atani robes bowing and scraping and laughing too loudly.  But he had fought, and so was gone. It made her face flush with shame, but in her memories of that day, the horror of the children’s execution was overwhelmed by her relief at being left alive.

The duke’s wife, white-faced, sat erect next to him.  Her smile was brittle and her movements tight and sharp.  Everyone knew why.  She had been a votary of Amala.  For anyone else, that would have meant an execution, but her life had been spared… for now.  Spared on condition of her husband’s obedience, his cooperation with their new overlords.  Callie wondered if the duchess felt the same way she did: kneeling before their altar, thinking she was damned, damned for betraying her faith.

The Primate, newly arrived from overseas, sat nearby, his forearms resting lightly on the table.  He was short, stocky, pale, and he coiled in the chair like a snake.  Callie shivered.  She was the littlest, the tiniest mouse.  There was bigger game under his eye.

The duke raised his glass in a shaking hand.  “To our glorious lord, the Dawn Emperor!”  The desperate roar of voices assaulted her ear, and she turned away.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week’s prompt calls for 33 to 333 words on the third definition of the word UNEASY (adj.):

1: causing physical or mental discomfort
2: not easy : difficult
3: marked by lack of ease : awkward, embarrassed <gave an uneasy laugh>

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the weekend prompt at Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This weekend, they asked us to continue one of our 33 word responses with 33 more words.  I chose to follow up on Revelation.  Here’s my original response:

You’re my wife, mother of my children.  You can tell me.  What did the Oracle say?”  He clasped her hands earnestly.

Her voice was ghostly, remote.  “It said that I was your doom.”

And here’s the next bit:

A silence fell.  She stared doggedly into the distance.  Of course, of course it had to come to this.  He was thinking it, she knew. There was nothing else to think.

Her father.

Thanks for reading!

They fled into the night, Dala laughing hysterically and Hasari gritting his teeth.  He’d scraped his face in the rush to get out the window, and Dala had nearly been shot by a guard, but she kept laughing, laughing, as if they had never done anything so amusing.  They could both have been killed, and for what?

The city streets flew by, dark and too familiar.  Just the sight of them made him tired. “Stop.  STOP!”  He grabbed her arm roughly and dragged her into an alley.

“We can’t keep doing this, Dala.  We –” he ran out of words.  “We just can’t.”

“What do you mean?  Of course we can!”  There was a feverish shine on her face, a fretful energy that was afraid to rest.

“What do I mean?  I mean it’s only blind luck that we’re not dead yet!”  Her carefree nonchalance had stopped being convincing a long time ago.  It had been real once, and he’d loved her for it.  These days it had a manic edge, a desperation for the girl who’d existed before the Fall to still be there.  It had taken him a long time to recognize: she couldn’t stop.  She would keep looking for trouble until it consumed her.

He had nothing left.

“We should go back.”  A rough village in the middle of nowhere, a life in hiding.  It no longer seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

She reared back sharply, incredulous.  “They told us not to leave.”

“And they were right.”  The words fell between them like lead.  She was staring at him with a blank look on her face, like he was speaking a language she didn’t understand. He looked away.  “I’m going back.”  He didn’t have to ask.  She wasn’t coming with him.  He looked back at her face for a long moment, memorizing.

“Goodbye, Dala.”  He dropped the words over his shoulder and left her, standing in the alley and staring after him.

Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This week called for 33 to 333 words using the third definition of the word BLIND (adj.):

“You’re my wife, mother of my children.  You can tell me.  What did the Oracle say?”  He clasped her hands earnestly.

Her voice was ghostly, remote.  “It said that I was your doom.”

Welcome to this weekend’s Trifextra challenge at Trifecta Writing Challenge!  This weekend’s prompt asked for 33 words on something that was three different things at the same time.  Thanks for reading!

“How did you know?”  They inspected the gruesome heap that was all that remained of their captor.

She grimaced.  “Demons are tricky.  They hate wizards.”  A pause.  “And he drew the sigil backward.”

Some weekend fiction fun with Trifecta Writing Challenge‘s Trifextra prompt.  This weekend calls for 33 words using the Rule of Three:  writing principle that asserts that, in writing, groups of three have the most impact.  Thanks for reading!

“You display a refreshingly total absence of guilt,” the instructor remarked as they inspected the aftermath of Eila’s graduate project.  Three days later, the ruins still smoked, and a scent as of burning hair lingered in the air.

“I grew up here.”  She was looking out over the pitted field, not bothering to watch the instructor as he considered her work.  Her grade had yet to be determined, but her graduation no longer seemed to be in question.  The breeze stirring her hair was hot and acrid.  She would probably have to throw away these clothes.

The instructor tilted his head consideringly but without surprise.  “Normally that rather weighs to the other end of the scale.”  He squatted to look at a dish-like depression some six feet across where the sandy soil had been melted to glass.  “Good depth of effect here.”

She paused at the edge of the deepest crater, shining with a thin layer of black glass.  There were no signs remaining of what it had once been.  She considered his first comment.

“Not in this case.”

“Indeed.”  They strolled on.

 Welcome to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge; this week called for 33 to 333 words using the third definition of the word ABSENCE (noun):