July, SoCNoC and a prompt...

So, it's July :)

I reached my 50,000 word goal for June, so managed to win both SoCNoC and StringMo. My goal for this month is smaller: 20,000 words :p

Fishcat on Stringing Words gave a link out to "Saturday Scribes" which is a weekly prompt site where you get the prompt on Friday and have until Saturday to write something and post it. So I decided to give it ago.

Here is my effort for this week. I will say here that this is an entirely new direction for me. This is the first "short" piece of prose I've written in a long time (several years) and that my usual genre is Fantasy. This... umm... style, is new ground, and as such, my writing possibly isn't up to par.

And I shall put an adult content notice on this, in case some young children are reading who still giggle at nakedness :)


Landscape

We are art.

You lie there, half covered in scarlet silken sheets your head thrown back, adorable in sleep. Your hair fans across the pillow, the curls falling about you in a halo of blonde. When you breathe the hair across your face moves in and out; as waves upon a beach. In and out, in and out. I can see the surf breaking now, the children screaming with delight as they paddle in the cold waters, and as they lose themselves to the ecstasy of the waves, I lose myself to the beauty of your body.

Your neck is the famous white cliffs of Dover, your breasts hills in the landscape. Your back dips down to create a valley, and as you sleep I trail my fingers down the curvature of your spine. You are so many things to me. You are a goddess, beauty incarnate, and you are mine.

We are lovers.

One of your hands is clasped to your rounded stomach. You hold new life in your hands. The landscape around us gives us what we need to survive, and you are giving yourself to our child. The art of self sacrifice. This child changes everything we have.

We will need to extend the house; to change the landscape around us to fit our new needs. And this child will change us too. Stretch marks will come, along with tired rings around our eyes and short tempers. Short fights and vents of frustration mixing with out of control hormones.

It is so worth it.

I move behind you, spooning my body around yours. My hands wrap around your still sleeping form and cradle you and the child. I touch the tightly stretched skin across your stomach and wait with baited breath to see if the child will kick, hitting out at his prison of flesh. This morning, nothing stirs. I close my eyes and wish for a boy. I know you wish for a girl. You want to name it Charlotte, or Peter. I prefer Juliet, or Lysander. You laughed at me for that, mocking my love of Literature. It was the first difference of opinion in our child’s life. I know there will be many more.

Together, we are poetry. We are lovers. But more than that, we are landscape. We are the support system for our child, the only world that they will know for many years before they are ready to take those final steps away from us. More than hills, mountains, valleys, seas and lakes, we are the landscape that you will come to see and love.