This is a picture I found on Pinterest and decided to respond to. If you’d like to respond yourself, don’t hesitate to write your own piece in the comments! Enjoy!
An eerie silence descended as they rounded the corner of the stream. The temperature of the air seemed to drop, the wind stilled. The birds ceased to sing. Even the trickle of the water running against the boat seemed distant. Aaron shivered, tightening his grip on the oar.
“What is this place?” He whispered to Freya, but she just shook her head in response.
The current slowed. Moving the boat along was harder, but the work was not warming. A bead of sweat rolled slowly down Aaron’s spine. Then, out of the thickening mist emerged what appeared to be a boulder, bone white and enormous, casting a dark shadow over the stream. Impossibly, the silence deepend. As the sluggish current moved them closer towards it – they had stopped paddling now – the details emerged.
Grey moss covered the bulbous forehead of the monstrous skull, but that was all. No plants grew out of the hollow sockets of its eyes or between the sharp white teeth. An area of decay surrounded it, lifeless. Its mouth gaped over the river.
Freya inhaled sharply, the only sound in the smothering stillness.
“This is the skull of a god,” she whispered, the sound flat and dead. Aaron looked around at the still and silent landscape. A sense of anxiety was creeping up his back, raising his hair on end.
“We shouldn’t be here.”
A hollow laugh echoed around them, rocking the boat and startling a group of birds that flew screaming out of the trees and far, far away.
“No,” said the voice, like thunder or ice, or the calm in the heart of a whirlwind.
“You should not.”
A Teacup Full of Stories 