Another Fateful Encounter

The next Flash is finally online! It's 13, my favourite number. :-) The prompt was one of my favourites as well:

"just as lightning sweeps across the sky, pouring out a flood of light over the landscape for a second or two"

It was easy to identify with, take up the style and produce something new, in this case the first encounter of Elisabet and John, both of whom you've met before. They'll have a daughter called Nadiya later. ;-)

Talking about fateful encounters... Do you believe fate exists? Or serendipity, or something similar? In this case, one could argue that two people fell in love because they have something in common already: taking walks where no one normally does. Is that enough of a reason to reject fate?

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• Thirteen

Moving Into the Future

This, again, took some time. It was a very busy weekend, and even though I started writing Ten at a museum in Hanover, Germany, while listening to children having fun, it took quite some time to complete (and start the next Flash before uploading this one, of course).
Here's the prompt:

"a few seconds later what Elisabet had thought was a bird took off and flew down in a spiral towards the pilgrims"

Now you know why I needed a girl called Elisabet. :-) Since she is the daughter of Lucy and Dan, who are more or less my generation, we now notice for the first time that we have moved a bit into the future. Of course, other Flashes have been farther still, but they didn't feature innovations like a tunnel that can depict an abandoned road or be transparent as glass (not to mention the perfect sound insulation and the bird camera).
I tried to weave the word "pilgrims" in as naturally as possible. How successful was I?

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• Ten

Another Point of View

"part of the glory of heaven that has strayed down to earth"

Isn't this a nice description for a newborn human? How long did it take you to understand what was going on with Elisabet?

This prompt gave me the chance to introduce Elisabet ahead of time, since her name is part of prompt number ten. She is the daughter of Lucy and Dan, or rather, the daughter of Lucy and an unknown stranger. Being blond, Lucy grew up with the goal of saving her natural hair colour from extinction by having blond children. Dan, being more on the dark side and almost her exact opposite, didn't fit the concept, but lucky for her fathering children proved a biological difficulty for him. He agreed to the in vitro fertilisation and even let Lucy select the father. In turn, naming the baby would be his call.
Now, Dan might not be very fond of reading books in general, but Lucy changed him somewhat. His favourite book, probably for its strangeness and easy of reading, turned out to be "The Christmas Mystery". When he knew that a blond girl was on the way, there was no doubt about what her name should be. Lucy wasn't very happy with this, and tried once to at least adjust the spelling to a more common version, but Dan wouldn't budge. In the end, bound by the promise she had give him, Lucy had to surrender and get used to the name.

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• Eight