Welcome back to the daily prompts. Day 2 and second for this week.
Tumbling iceberg: picture prompt
Afterwards, Bobby denied it all. But Veronica couldn’t get the image out of her head. Over the years it faded, so the sky was more washed out, the silhouettes of the trees and the snow-peaked mountains across the lake faded to grey. It all became like one of those old colour photos, pre-digital, where the brightness dissipates and the detail sinks into the paper.
Except for the ice creature.
In Veronica’s head, the pure white of the water streaming over the luminous blue, jagged hump never dulled. Its bright presence never dimmed.
Nor did the events which seared the image into her brain.
But Bobby always denied there was ever an ice creature. He told the tale like this:
Beatrice had returned from the nearby village with cheese, hams and fresh bread and a lurid warning from the locals not to venture onto the lake. When asked why, they had muttered something about freezing, although Veronica had seen the shadow of doubt in Beatrice’s eyes because her language skills weren’t up to the local dialect.
‘But it’s why we’ve come all this way,’ she insisted. ‘We have to go on the lake.’
I demurred and Bobby was happy to follow my lead. If the natives say it’s dangerous, perhaps we should take our photographs, and return in the late summer when it wasn’t so ‘freezing.’
Beatrice sulked and the next morning, as Bobby and I warmed ourselves by the fire, she stamped off down to the water’s edge, untied the one man canoe we had thought to take turns in to capture the shore from the lake, and rowed defiantly towards the middle.
Veronica and Bobby agree on this version to this point.
Bobby ends the tale with: She capsized some way out and we watched in horror as she froze and drowned, her body never recovered.
But when Veronica closes her eyes and searches the sepia tones of memory, the brilliant hump-backed ice creature rises from the water
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Totally out of place, thought Reg. An iceberg in a lake – even though this was Scotland and the weather could be bitter, particularly in winter.
He gazed across the water and checked again. No mistaking it – definitely an iceberg, not a huge one, mind, but nevertheless large enough to be seen from anywhere in the surrounding countryside.
How on earth had it got there, he marvelled. Must be one of those freaks of nature we are so often hearing about but seldom see.
Reg’s thought whirled. Perhaps there was a more rational explanation. Perhaps it was some sort of scientific experiment gone wrong – like something out of Dr Who, his favourite show.
Reg could just imagine the well-known scientist alighting from his phone box with thoughtful countenance and then offering some totally rational explanation.
Reg wracked his brain and couldn’t think of any – forced to admit he lacked the scientific genius of his TV hero.
Hang on, what was that he spotted. Figures dressed in white hazmat suits barely discernible from the icy mound.
What were they doing? Looked like they were operating some sort of equipment and, before his very eyes, the iceberg began increasing in size.
That wasn’t right. Icebergs tended to melt and become smaller over time – not bigger. However, not this one. This monstrosity was rapidly growing becoming taller than a ten-storey building.
It was then that Reg realised what they were doing. They were pumping masses of liquid nitrogen into the ice so the surrounding lake water also froze and became part of the whole construction.
Why on earth would they want to do that, he thought. Reg couldn’t wait for the figures to come ashore so he could find out.
Why indeed?
I always lover your fantasy tales!!
i don’t do real life very well …