***BONUS optional challenge: totally optional, not required, nor do you net extra points except in our unabashed respect: in honor of faithful and enthusiastic dragon stellakateT, who cannot write with us today: name a major character Stella.
The toughest part of being a judge (apart from the judging obviously) is not being able to read all the wonderful comments on everyone’s stories, which are often just as much fun to read as the stories themselves. These all get stripped, along with your names, for the sacred judging scroll, which is hand written in unicorn tears before being delivered by tiny fire-breathing owls. No expense is spared in the name of fair and equitable judgery-ish-ness. On a totally unrelated note, don’t tell tiny fire-breathing owls how cute they are if you like your eyebrows.
One or two of you took on the optional ‘Stella challenge’ this week, leading to a cavalcade of Stellas. Some were hunters, some were prey, some were young and some were old, some were human, some were not and one of them was quite literally a pregnant planet! More than one was a dragon, just like our very own stellakateT. I hope that ‘our’ Stella enjoyed the surprise when she popped by to check out this week’s stories :)
Anyway, enough of my ramblings; on to the important business of the results…
This story by David Hartley didn't win but it was one of my favourites http://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/flash-friday-vol-2-39/#comment-14147
Every Friday evening I get home from work and go to @FridayflashFic on twitter to see the picture prompt and write 140 to 160 words hoping to win. There are so many good writers producing great little tales that I'd be so amazed if I ever won. so if you ever have time on your hands go read these flashes of gold.
Here is the winning story
Vol 2 – 39 – John Murray Lewis
Untitled
Margaret did as she was told, carried her baby across the moor to St. Kilda’s Barrow. She’d named him Ian, after his father.
She had to be brave, like Ian’s father, brave Father Macquaig. How he had trembled when she brought the baby to his rectory door, when she told him the child was his, when they prayed together; when he told her, then, of the baobhan sith and how it could only be sated by the blood of the chosen child—this very child!—sacrificed in the barrow of St. Kilda.
The barrow was close now, an island in the mist…
Something was not right. Father Macquaig had instructed her to remove the entrance stone, but the stone was already gone.
Inside the barrow, Margaret found another village girl, Agnes, cradling a bloody bundle.
“The chosen child,” she cooed. “His own daughter…”
“Whose?”
“Brave Father Macquaig’s!” Agnes said, weeping reverently.
Beneath Margaret’s cloak, Ian laughed for the first time.
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