We were given the prompt ‘winter’ in June! So it was a nice challenge to get into a winter mindset in the of summer.
The idea came from a swing that used to hang over the stream, beside the Kilve Beach car park in Somerset. I had recently been looking at footage of my niece and nephew playing on it when they were younger.
Ella hated that her parents always argued, but the now deathly silence between them was somehow worse. She rarely came back anymore, but this visit had a purpose. Placing down her mug, the chair scraped as she stood up and walked into the hallway to grab her fleece-lined coat and woollen scarf.
Outside on the doorstep, Ella took in a breath, admiring the glowing tendrils of clouds from the low winter sun across the deepening blue sky. She wrapped her scarf tighter as she exhaled, white and smoky wisps trailing from her lips. Winter had not yet dug in its icy talons, but that evening the ominous snow clouds were building to the west.
Crossing the road, she followed the familiar worn track through the kissing-gate and into the park. Ella smiled as the path meandered below an avenue of ancient twisted oaks. To her and Madge they were in fact Ents, stretching out their haggard limbs into the meandering stream, beard and armpit lichen swaying lazily in the breeze.
The park was almost silent, only the occasional twitter of birds to accompany the rhythmic crunch of fallen rusty brown leaves below her feet, as she paced towards the majestic evergreen oak.
The round wooden swing was still there, now hanging limp and weather-beaten below the tree canopy, just as she remembered. Ella took a seat on the makeshift bench by the stream’s edge, watching the rays of moonlight dance across the water’s surface.
As kids, Madge had loved to swing, while Ella had preferred to make up songs on the stream bank. It would be ten years that summer, since the rope had snapped.
Ella closed her eyes, the memory still so raw. Why she kept on coming back she didn’t know, but it was the only place she felt close to her sister; afraid to forget her beautiful face, her laugh.
Tomorrow, the oak would be cut down, to make way for a new housing estate.
Tomorrow, she would chain herself to this tree, to protect her sister’s memory.
Copyright © 2019 Lottie McKnight. All rights reserved.