Fractal Realities: January
A former Ficleteer...
He gently shook his canteen and judged that the water might last until perhaps sundown. If he didn't find a creek soon, tonight would be dry and tomorrow would be more difficult than usual. He took a small sip of tepid water, then closed the canteen tightly.
Picking up his backpack, he continued west along the rim, frequently swatting insects trying to deprive him of blood. To the extent he could, he avoided the edge of the rim and its direct blast of hot air from the valley below. The entire area had been a forest once upon a time but, judging from the traces of charcoal, much of it had burned. What hadn't burned seemed to have died from the heat.
By nightfall, he had reached the end of the rim. Below him, he thought he could see the ruins of a city. Beyond that, a large body of water. Consulting his tattered map, he thought that the city might have been Anchorage.
The heat, the stinging sweat, and biting flies, all added up to one thought. Alaska in January hadn't always been like this.
Comments (3 so far!)
August Rode
Not sure what you mean by "meaty," Robert, but the third paragraph was the weakest paragraph in the story, I thought. I've tightened it up a bit. The 4th paragraph has been slightly changed. Everything else is as it was. I won't edit the story further, no matter how much I want to.
- #3847 Posted 5 years ago
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Robert Quick
Meaty as in stuff I can tear into, mostly in terms of taking a sentence out and making a new story from it-- fractaling it.
- #3849 Posted 5 years ago
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Inspired by (sequel to):
Each spadeful of dirt opened the earth a little further. It never seemed like much but it added up b…
Fractal Realities: Partners in Time- Published 5 years ago and featured 5 years ago.
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All stories on Ficlatté are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. What does this mean?
Robert Quick
A bomb? A meteor? Climate change? A combination? Something else? The possibilities are intriguing. The third paragraph looks the most meaty to me (to fractal).