Sentinels

Early morning. Fog moves, rolls across the land. Hiding, then revealing the bare wooden bones of fences. But never venturing down the path, it alone is unconcealed. Revealed.

In the distance, made small by the space, stand the sentinels.

Always in twos, always silent, always there. They stand and watch and wait. Guardians. Defenders. Watchers. They protect the path, none can walk it without their knowledge. None can walk it without their assent.

Consent is never given. So nothing ever walks down the path, no one knows where it leads, or why it is guarded. No one even attempts to learn any more. Even the animals avoid the path. Late every spring there are a certain amount of casualties, young animals, birds that have not learnt.

The occasional overly adventurous child. A lesson for all the others, but one that fades with time, until the next rebel, the next loss.

The sentinels do not care, do not offer excuses or reasons. Grief and mourning, accusations and blame. They never respond to emotions, or words, or tears. Only to trespassers.

They stand, silent, unmoving. Great wooden sentinels. Their reason, their intent unknown, long since forgotten. Only their actions left. Sentinels: bringers of death.

Forgotten Machine posted his 15-min challenge, and I decided to give it a go. You’ll find the pic here

The rules are as follows:
1. Click here and choose any image you like.
2. Compose your piece in less than 15 mins.
3. Post it to your blog.
4. I think for this round it might be interesting to read the piece without seeing the image first, so just provide a link to the image after the piece (note that since the website uses frames, you can get the URL for particular images by hovering over the thumbnails).