So I’m posting my first piece of flash fiction. What is flash fiction? It’s a very short piece of fiction, usually less than 1000 words that still contains the basics of a story. This is a piece I wrote awhile ago, inspired by a prompt in a writing magazine. I’ll post any flash fiction pieces as blog posts but I’ll also provide links under the Short Story/Flash Fiction tab. Thanks for reading!
The King’s Farewell
He’d put his affairs in order, given his power away to his many sons. Of course, if they were willing to pay the price they could visit him, but he doubted they would. His time above was a source of shame to them. The reason they had kept their children so distant from their own grandfather.
“Are you certain about this?” his servant Havla asked as he took the crown and the pearl plate armor from his king.
“You know that I am,” the old king replied. “I am finally free.”
“Giving up your life isn’t freedom,” Havla said, the words floating in iridescence around their heads.
“Is that any way to talk to your king?”
Havla’s held up the crown, his round eyes now showing sorrow instead of irritation. “You are no longer my king.”
The old man nodded and smiled, putting his hand on his servant’s…his friend’s shoulder. “Goodbye Havla.”
The servant didn’t answer, turning away and disappearing in a flash of tears and tail. And so, in his last few minutes between the old life and the new, the king was alone. Alone to push his way through the western depths, to fight the unnatural brightness as he rose from the bottom of the blue toward the sunlight.
On the shore he used his last bits of royal privilege to disguise himself, to become a human man standing at the edge of the sea in rolled up trousers. It echoed the way he had appeared three decades before when he had bid his beloved second wife and his only daughter goodbye. His “land family” as his sons below had come to call it.
With one hand he held up a soft dark shirt, turned to salute the waves, and bid a final farewell to the deep. Then he shrugged the familiar cloth over shoulders that were only just now becoming skin from scales.
Jenel Alan 