The #storycraft Flash Challenge

The challenge was 300 words from an inanimate object's point of view.




Garden

He sat as he had since the family brought him home, still, unmovable, a joy to look at in the carefully tended garden. The children loved him. They clambered over his surface, playing. He liked the children, enjoyed their laughter and the way they made him a centerpiece to their games for the short time they loved him.

Sometimes he wondered where he would go next as he listened to the world flow around him. The lives of others came and went, mere sparks flashing past in his long life.

He wasn't sure when he began to realize it was lonely. Maybe it was the day the children no longer came to play. Or, it could have been the night the mouse living under him picked up her babies and moved them, one by one. He didn't remember the last time he had been with others of its kind. That startled him. He had never forgotten anything before. With a soundless sigh he began to know longing.

The family left, another took their place, a young couple with no children to play on him. Bored, he went back to sleep.

A commotion in the front seeped into his awareness. He woke to find many people scurrying about in the garden. They pruned the trees and replaced the flowers. The chatter of the pansies annoyed him but at least their silliness was something new. He put up with it. Suddenly he saw her, riding toward him in her wheelbarrow chariot. Moss and bits of dirt clung to her like jewels. The workers placed her beside him.

"There, now this old rock doesn't look lonely anymore." The worker gave him a pat.

They nestled close together. "It's a nice garden," she said.

"Yes, it is." He wasn't lonely anymore.