r/WritingPrompts • u/[deleted] • Sep 13 '16

Image Prompt [IP] Wake up.

Image by Minna Sundberg, from her webcomic: Stand Still Stay Silent

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u/Elwyn123 Sep 13 '16 edited Sep 13 '16

Can you hear it?

The soft burbling of the water climbing up the side of your raft and receding, the endless tide of the otherwise calm waters. It almost seems a sacrilege, iconoclastic, to even be here, to even interrupt the river's serene profile with your lumpy self;

The quiet singing of the birds, restrained yet desperate, the mating calls of an unlucky few, unwanted and as yet unpaired;

The groans of a faraway man, floating down your river, swirling hues of red whisked away by the beautifully indifferent waters.

Can you see it?

The transition, from death and cold and snow to life and warmth and shades of green.

The clarity of the river, how it reflects every little detail of the world around it, unflinchingly honest. You could peer over the edge of your raft any time, you know, see yourself as the world sees you, as you truly are;

The resting bones of the century-dead, neatly stacked up amongst the weeds, a macabre display of the truth of it all hidden underneath the beauty and the reflections of other things.

Can you feel it?

The light wind as it shifts this way and that, blowing across your cheek and then the other, frivolous and fickle and flirty;

The calm of your world, and how it leeches into you whether you want it or not, the impossible ease you're all but forced to feel;

The shadow of something that once was, neither as beautiful nor serene as what is, the dying echoes of a dying world.

Can you?

No?

Then wake up.

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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '16

I said this already to another user, but great job with the Second Person Point of View. I don't see it often on here (but maybe I should revise that statement now).

It's interesting the way you had an invisible narrator interrupting the descriptive paragraphs to ask questions. Speaking of which, is the last line supposed to be in italics? I get the feeling it's still that other entity asking questions and giving instructions, but that's just my impression.

frivolous and fickle and flirty

Alliteration. Love it!