Hello Readers, Writers, and Friends,

Welcome to another installment of Mini Fiction Monday. Here in the States it is a holiday. President’s day to be precise. So there has been hiking and much whining from children about doing chores on their day off. The sooner they learn there are no days off, the better. And given that so many of our most outstanding leaders have birthdays in February perhaps we should add that as a litmus test for the candidates over the next few cycles. It may be arbitrary, but it couldn’t possibly make matters worse. A nice, quiet Pieces could be just what this nation needs. But enough politics.

Now is the time for fiction. For a mini fiction. A tiny something to make us smile and give our week a lift, right from the beginning. I remind you that I don’t edit these. I free write them, with only the autocorrect to save me from my woeful typistry. As always, I hope you will join me, take these prompts and use them on your own to generate a story you can share or keep all to yourself.

This week’s prompts are: a character of the Arthurian legends, ocean

The ocean keeps and tells secrets.

Every wave a whisper of some cryptic sentiment, lost to its depths. Some ancient, others only days old. But when the ocean brings you a clue, a new revelation with he tide, you ought to listen.

You have to be very careful though. Because if you let it, the ocean will sweep you away to, making you just another secret it’s hiding away.

It revealed me to my mother. Washed me ashore in a row boat.

And then it revealed me to myself.

I was sitting on the rocks, fixing a fishing net, there was nothing to do but fix the fishing nets or fish with the fishing nets or gather the reeds that mother would use to make the fishing nets, when the wave left at me.

IT broke over the rocks, and pulled me out into the water.

I hated the water. Just like I hated the cold. But I was a strong swimmer. Mother insisted.

When I rose tot he surface I was already far from shore. I could see our little house perched up on the hill, looking out to sea with its blank little windows.

And the ocean kept pulling. It pulled me out, and away and down. Only to spit me back up so I could see that I was hopelessly far from the beach, from home.

The waves pushed. And I let them. I knew better than to fight a rip tide, and this one felt as though it had hands, gripping my ankles, yanking me here and there. I almost wondered if I was meant to be another stolen secret that the ocean would keep until it washed me ashore somewhere, but then I saw it.

In the deep, shining from its burial in the silt of the seabed, was the hilt of a sword. It defied its surroundings without even a barnacle on the hilt. I knew it wouldn’t pull free, and that I would die trying to lift it, let alone swim with it home, but I gripped it anyway.

And then she was there, smiling at me. A lady made all of water and light.

The sword came free in my hand, and buoyed me up and up.

The foam roiled around me, and I lost track of which way the shore was. I swallowed more water than I breathed air, but the choking didn’t stop me from hanging on.

I flailed and splashed, and finally i gave up all that and just clung to it, with both hands. Trusting that whatever this was, it would get me home again.

Then feet found the bottom, I walked up onto the sand, not a stones throw away from he rocks where my fishing nets still sat, as though the waves had no use for them at all.

The sword found its true weight, now landed, and I had to drag it, exhausted as I was, up the hill.

Mother was calling me from the door of our house.

“Arthur, supper time!”