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The blacksmith’s advice (on asking to marry his daughter)

Foyer de forge lors de la Saint-Éloi 2012, manifestation organisée par le Centre d’Histoire Sociale au Moulin Saint-Gilles à Rouen.
Foyer de forge lors de la Saint-Éloi 2012, manifestation organisée par le Centre d’Histoire Sociale au Moulin Saint-Gilles à Rouen. photo credit: Foyer via photopin (license)
“Marriage is a metal,” the huge man said, pumping the forge so the flames roared and the heat swallowed us. “You need fire or you’re wasting your time.”

He whipped an iron bar from the forge, holding its glowing red tip mere inches from my sweating face.

“But every fire goes out… and what you get left with is weak and brittle.” He began pounding the bar his speech punctuated by each swing of his massive hammer, “if you want something durable, tough, useful… well you need to work it.”

 

A super short story for Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction challenge where the prompt word was ‘Flames‘.

This one… is not my best. I think there is a good metaphor here, I just couldn’t get it to work right. I’ve also abused the rules of English punctuation to get this to fit into five sentences, which is never a positive sign.

Oh well, maybe I’ll revisit it.In any case, check the other stories here!

(And leave a comment or a like, I love to get feedback :)).

Cheers

KT

Published by: wildbilbo

My name is Kristian Thoroughgood, alternately known as KT to my friends, or @WildBilbo on twitter. As of August 2015, I am forty years old. Australian. My blog is intended to be both a place for me to polish my creative writing muscles (not a double entendre) and for others to read and comment on my musings. Expect short stories, articles, essays and other brain dumps. My opinions are my own, and whilst I take care to be at least moderately informed about any topic I speak or write about, these opinions are subject to rapid change in the face of passionate arguments and greater evidence. Please note - on my blog, Evidence beats Passion.

Categories Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short, WritingTags, , , , , , , , 12 Comments

12 thoughts on “The blacksmith’s advice (on asking to marry his daughter)”

  2. It’s a piece of a story, not so much it’s own story. A good analogy, and well demonstrated. I think it fits perfectly with the image too, so I did not feel like I had been cheated of a story, nor that you were proselytizing.

    Oh: ‘punctuated by by each’ I caught an error!

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  3. Pingback: Five Sentence Fiction: Crimson Eyes | The Book Bard

  4. I like your story! It inspired me to try the challenge too. I hope you don’t mind, but I linked to your post on my own to thank you for introducing me to the challenge.

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  7. I like this because it has great, vivid imagery. Very easy to visualize the strong man, working at his trade, dispensing no-nonsense advice. There’s a lot of truth contained in the blacksmith’s brief words.

    One of your posters says it is a piece of a story; I think that’s true in that it’s something I’d love to see as part of a bigger story. You really are a fine writer – these five sentences show your skill.

    When you get an opportunity, stop by and see my take on the prompt. I’ll warn you now it is… odd. I was in a quirky mood when writing it. 😀

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    1. I shall check it out – I don’t mind weird 🙂

      I can see how this might be seen as a fragment – I think most of my ‘unhappiness’ with it was due to feeling restricted by the sentence limit. It needed ten sentences to get context & completion.

      Thanks again for the very kind words!

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