Safety In The North

We hug the coastline, the water lipping and lapping, squeezing us against scrub brush and pink granite boulders. Sophie stomps her feet in plops of seafoam eddying in the tide pools. We let her play. So much has been lost. But not this. Her innocence glinting in the sunlight, giggles clutching our heartbeats. We safeguard this last remnant, this singular, unsullied, untarnished, vestige. Otherwise, what is it all for? Trudging at night beneath ribbons of greenish-blue light, the auroras coxswaining us toward safety in the northern hemisphere. We press ahead. Agents two days behind at most. Our precious cargo intact. From Guest Contributor Karen Schauber

Karen’s flash fiction appears in over 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf Top 50. Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction – an online resource hub, and in her spare time is a seasoned family therapist. Read her at: KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com

Displacement

Love at first sight, different people from different cultures.

Driving my Pajero along the rugged coastline of Mayo. A fortnight I had lived in Ireland. Banished for my own safety; a key witness in court against something dark, dangerous. Displaced from my family for doing what was right, exiled into the night. The previous eve I lost myself in similar lanes, crying.

In daylight the shadows dispersed. He was in his tractor, he belonged, descendant of families forever etched in the Irish soil. Appointed by chance as my gardener, meeting by fate. I never once doubted. Three years married. Aliens.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Kelly