The beauty that surrounded me while soaring gently and quietly through the air, always made me think of Carol waiting faithfully for me at home. I know that Carol always worried when I flew, but she never let on. She had kept the fear to herself, not wanting me to be distracted in any way. She knew from the beginning that I loved flying and never interfered, and I loved her all the more for it. It was always in these quite moments that I chose to spiritually have her join me here.

The weather was warm and the resultant thermals were slowing my rate of descent. I was confident that I would make the runway easily and so was happy for my mind to wander around the hills and vales of my life rather than concentrate on those below me. I had flown many times and felt completely in control of this environment which was at once both natural and unnatural.

I was thrown from my reverie by the sight of a large bank of dark cloud directly ahead of me over the expanse of forest that announced my approach to the runway. If there was rain there as well, then controlling my descent could prove difficult.

I suddenly became aware of a feeling of being where I did not belong. Man was not meant to fly and seemed to be the only creature that couldn’t fly that had any great ambitions to do so. Aircraft were designed to counter the forces of nature which constantly construed to remind us that our place was on the ground. It was these forces of nature that were now construing to bring me down and I would have to use all my resources to get me over the beckoning trees.

It was quite dark under the clouds and with it my once sunny mood completely disappeared. I had no time for self pity though as all my faculties were now directed in keeping us in the air for the few minutes required to reach the runway. The controls felt sluggish and the craft unresponsive to my desires, responding more to the forces of gravity pulling us inexorably towards the earth.

Suddenly, through the haze of rain and cloud I could see in the distance the runway lights, but as I felt and heard the tips of some of the taller trees scraping underneath me I realised that even that small distance was too great and that I was not going to make it. I was going to have to land in the forest and a forest was not the place to try and land a crippled Boeing 737.

Current prompt till 15th of September is:

Time to beat my own drums, well more like our drums. As of today Flash Fiction boasts of 105 registered writers! Woot! Last prompt had 18 fabulous entries to it. I don’t know if we’ll go uphill from here or not. But I am cherishing this moment and THANK YOU ALL for making one of my wishes come true, now only if you all donate a billion I can strike of another one too. This site has now become much more than I ever imagined it would be. I do realize that the comment counts on posts is quite less. A certain wise and nice lady once told me: “You can always find something good in every piece of writing, which you can thank the writer for. And if you don’t like anything at all, give a useful critique that in your opinion would help the writer get better.” I’m not saying everyone should live by this code. But you can sure give it a try and find out for yourself. After all, the main purpose of this site is to provide a platform where writers can make new friends. Also, the lack of comments certainly doesn’t mean we don’t have readers. Over a 100 have subscribed to the site’s feed and another 20+ via email. So we are being read.

Also, I’ve created a separate category for Posts that are not on current/past prompts and have also provided their links on the side-bar. I still encourage everyone to share their work and am delighted that people are finding this a good platform, but I’ve decided against showing them at the homepage as I like a certain order and would like to keep the idea behind the site intact. Please bear with me for the same. To everyone who is interested in reading them, they are just one click away and would also appear in the feeds.

If you’re new here and want to post your take on the prompt: Please Go to the side panel to register to the site. Once you’ve registered, you are officially an author for this site.

You’ll see a dashboard where you can create/edit your posts on the site. You can also edit your profile there.Welcome to the party!

To know more about what we do and why are we here, please go through: A NEW HOPE