Friday Flash Fiction

Amy C at Romance Book Wyrm and Dottie atTink's Place have come up with the idea for a Monday Morning Flash Fiction challenge. Each Monday a new picture prompt will be posted and if you choose to participate - you publish your Fiction Flash  on Friday - 350 words, give or take. Below you can find the picture posted last Monday:

This pic actually made me willing to continue the story of Lilian, a girl who liked reading too much and was as curious as a cat. It means I am leaving poor Mark from the last week flash in the clutches of that vampiress for the time being. I might return to him, I might not - we'll see.


Lilian was reading about a girl completely lost  in an alien word. A girl whose only defence was her pentagram amulet and who could talk only with butterflies. A girl who came from a country where she could walk around  naked undisturbed and landed in a country where being naked was the wretched fate of the lowest of low. Nobody understood her anguish, nobody cared. Lilian felt wetness on her cheeks - tears of that unknown creature who couldn't even introduce herself so nobody could call her a proper name. So lonely, so homesick it hurt.

Lilian wanted to stop reading, the whole story being too depressive to suit her vivacious character, but she couldn't do it, trapped in a compulsive urge to turn one page after another. She felt some danger approaching but even then she couldn't put her book down. The girl she was reading about felt some danger too but she at least could face it. Somebody was looking for her, asking strange questions in a barbaric language she didn't understand. She stopped breathing and Lilian did the same.

A woman envelopped in a long, voluminous cloak was standing before them both. The unknown girl pressed her hands to her chest with the pentagram clutched between them on a long chain. She was afraid but she was also curious and desperate for any help. The woman eyed her in a calculating manner and then took her elbow and led her along a dark, shiny river. The girl followed her meekly and her butterfiles were circling around them as if checking the route. The girl asked the butterflies if it was safe and some of them answered it was too dark to tell anything. One, however, a moth with large wings, told her they were going toward a building with many lights so perhaps it was not safe but certainly exciting. The girl didn't understand what 'exciting' meant.

Lilian felt her ache, insecurity and determination to break free and return home. She could relate - she also wanted to break free from that horrible book but she couldn't find a way out. When the girl with the cloaked woman were entering the building and the butterflies were flying madly around Lilian felt a sudden pain and the enchanted book flew out of her hands. She gasped, half in surprise, half in relief.