Write On Edge: Choice & Consequence Challenge

This week's Red Writing Hood challenge gives us 400 words to explore a choice and/or a consequence.

There is no more unifying need than the freedom of choice, neither is there a more terrifying concept than the ripple of effect. We are taught from our earliest age that there are consequences for the choices we make, and we each face a myriad of choices on an hourly basis. What intrigues me most is how consequences have evolved over time while our choices remain the same. One only has to look at the punishments allowed in the classroom decades ago to realize how far we've come as a society. Of course, one could argue that our social morality is degraded to the point of extinction. Look at the filth we obsess over on television that is lumped into the world of "reality shows".

For this week, I decided once again to provide a historical perspective. Not surprising since I've just come back from a renaissance fair weekend and my recent light reading has been inundated with Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Blake.


I offer the following in response: Lamenting The Tempest

If not for the wind… His hollow words eroded her spirit until all that remained was the stinging poltergeist of his goodbye. If not for the tide…

“Deliverance, where do you go when you close your eyes?” Esther’s words drew her back from the shore.

She opened her eyes and watched the fire crackling in the hearth. Brutish flames banished autumn from the room like a deposed monarch. Ash dripped as tainted snow to the stone floor while the sacrificial hemlock exchanged its charred skin for nothingness. Deliverance wished she could surrender her scorned heart for the promise of oblivion. If not for the tide… “I go nowhere,” she answered.

“You worry me,” Esther whispered through her chronic frown. Deliverance could not recall a time when she ever smiled. “Since the discovery of your sailor’s trespasses, you have become rather…tempestuous.”

She summoned her lie from the eye of her turbulent emotions, "Be at ease, Cousin. I have made peace with his betrayal."

Esther, still frowning, did not respond. She took up her tatting, shifting the intensity of her gaze to the shuttling of picots.

Deliverance found the heat stifling and rose, pleading her need for air. Despite Esther's protests and the foul weather, she walked towards the shore from their isolated homestead, headlong into the lashing wind. Where aggressive waves violated the naked beach, a briny spray raked her eyes. If not for the wind, if not for the tide… Her false-hearted sailor was as cruel as his watery mistress. She glared at his ocean until she could no longer endure the insult. Madness shattered her tenuous peace, unleashing screams to rival howling banshees. “I condemn you! May your ship dash itself upon the rocks! May your beloved ocean swallow you whole!”

Lightning flashed in the gathering clouds, belching thunder and hailstones. A virulent tremor possessed her as her fury became a force of reckoning. “Oh Lord, I beseech Thee,” she wailed. “Smite this foul deceiver! Shred his soul with everlasting fire and command the fiends of Hell to feast on his flesh!”

Heartless rain abused her mightily, yet she screamed and cursed until her voice failed. Buckling, she clawed at the scarlet letters stitched to her clothing. I would stay and we would marry, if not for the wind, if not for the tide… Within her swelling belly, their baby kicked for the first time.