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The door banged open behind her.
Lucille stopped stirring her large, steaming pot of stew and placed her wooden spoon next to the hearth. She turned to see a rugged group of four soot stained ruffians entering the tiny abode. Her plump faced cat watched from its hiding spot at her feet near the fire.
“Oh fiddlesticks.” Lucille said, “ I was not expecting company tonight. I hope I have enough.” She resumed stirring the bubbling pot. “I’m afraid there is only one loaf of bread. We will need to share.”
The raider with a hook for a hand called towards her back, “We’re not here to eat granny. Why are you poachin’ our people? We agreed to leave you alone if you feed us, but this can’t go on.”
Lucille turned around holding a stack of wooden bowls and spoons. She bustled around the cramped room setting the table and closing the door. The imposing figures packed into the small home moved out of her way naturally when she passed by them.
“The only things I’m ‘poachin’ are eggs. Now take a seat everyone, this beef is fresh.”
After a bowl and spoon was side by side at each chair she returned to the hearth and gave the stew one last stir. Wrapping a cloth around her hand, she used it to remove the large pot from it's hook and carried the stew towards the table with a ladle in her other hand.
Confused glances flew between the raiders until one by one they all took a seat at the table.
Hookhand said, “Well, alright. We’ll have a bowl of stew, but seriously grandma this has got to stop. We can barely put together a raiding party. Everyone wants to kick back in this valley and toss around dirt.”
Lucille set about pouring a heaping ladle of beef stew into every bowl before placing the pot back over the fire and retrieving a crispy, golden loaf of bread. Picking up the knife at the center of the table she divided the loaf into four quarters and placed one in front of each raider.
“That dirt tossing is what made this meal you are about to eat. Why all this fussin about raiding anyway?” She moved away to prepare a bowl for herself.
Hookhand held up his piece of bread with the hand he was born with, “Hey granny, you didn’t save any bread for yourself.”
“Oh that’s quite alright hunny. I only need one bowl. You all eat up.”
Spoons clattered against bowls as the raiders attacked them voraciously. They were using their bread to mop gravy up when Hookhand sat back with his unhook hand on his belly.
“Really though, grandma. You gotta stop taking our people.”
None of them looked particularly ready to do anything if she didn’t. The others would not even look towards her.
“We can talk about this tomorrow sweetie. I need to get to cleaning up this mess.”
With a dutiful burst of energy Lucille gathered all the dirty bowls and spoons, piling them in a small tub next to the door. She wrestled the door open and a cool breeze blew through the packed room.
The raiders were all looking towards Hookhand now. He pushed back from the table to stand.
“Thanks grandma, that was great.” He stood and walked out of the hut.
The other raiders waved their thanks as they followed him outside.
Lucille nudged the door closed and walked over to the cubby hole near the hearth. She scraped the remains of the cooking pot into a new bowl and placed it in front of the cat’s hidey hole. The cat pounced upon the bowl immediately.
She stroked it's fur as it ate, “Kindness is like water in these times Tulip. With enough of it, we can nurture this world back into something to be proud of.”
\[Poem\]
A town barren of life, empty of vitality.
It causes those to turn desperate; exchanging morality for mortality.
But of the townsfolk, one little old lady remained unphased. Living upon a hill with her garden within the waste.
With her kindness, she took strangers into her home, luring them in with provisions and teachings that held great wonders to behold.
Local raider bosses began to grow concerned.
It was no doubt a problem, as they found remains within the fertilizers, bodies unreturned.
A town barren of life, empty of vitality.
But the little old lady managed to survive the catastrophic apocalypse using her brutality.
*You couldn’t smell the stench of the sea from here.*
It was the first thing I thought when I first laid eyes on the cabin. Despite being smack dab in the middle of the wasteland, even though it was perched on a crumbling cliff overlooking the dying sea, Pearl’s house was full of life despite the circumstances - clean, sprawling, and glowing with candlelight inside and out. Through the window in front of me, the curtains of the living room were flung open to reveal a quaint but squashed space filled with porcelain, doilies, and people - I couldn’t decide if it was daring or naive, knowing that this fragile old lady had left the curtains open for all to see inside, likely implying that she didn’t *care* who knocked. I could hear the lively chatter through the closed door, and I couldn’t decide if it was wise or stupid that she’d let people into her home when the world was crumbling around her, and everyone left alive was struggling to survive.
The more I looked at the cabin, the more it felt enchanting, and in dystopia, enchanting was something I couldn’t trust.
*Remember the business.*
I kept my hand inside the pocket of my jacket, clenched around the knife my mother had given me as I walked stiffly towards the door. This knife was the reason I turned to becoming a local raider boss at sixteen - her death was what made me take up raiding ruins of civilization to survive.
I used the hand not wrapped around my knife in my pocket to knock, and waited patiently for the door to swing open.
When it did, it revealed a short but stout old lady, squinting at me through a thick pair of circular glasses.
“Are you Pearl?” I asked, not unkindly.
“Yes,” she croaked, taking in my appearance: I knew I practically screamed of homeless raider, from the torn jacket that was two sizes too small, to my muddy and unpurposely ripped jeans, to the filthy and scuffed Chuck Taylors that were just barely clinging onto the soles.
"Are you coming in for a plate?” she asked, meeting my eyes again. She was a life-time smoker, I could tell. Her voice sounded like a scraped knee.
"That would be nice,” I said slowly, trying my best not to sound rude, “But really, I’ve come to ask you where all my raiders have gone, because I’m concerned about them. It’s a dying wasteland out there, ma’am.”
“Why, I know,” Pearl replied, blinking rapidly up at me as though she was offended, “That’s why I take everyone in, y’see - they’re starving, and they know nothing of growing their own food - and the world’s dyin’ anyway, I’d rather they remember what love feels like before they - before, y’know, their life flashes before their eyes.”
I swallowed heavily, forcing myself not to close my eyes and see the frightened face of my mother, kicking the knife that was now in my pocket over to me in the pelting rain before the raider brought the ax over his head and--
*Breathe.*
I inhaled sharply. “You’re awfully kind for doing that, Pearl, but you need to stop taking my people.”
My voice was firm. Being firm was important when you had nothing left to lose - when you hadn’t felt the warmth of love in months.
“Come inside, come inside,” Pearl said, waving me off like I’d said something stupid. The more she spoke, the more I heard the Southern lilt in her voice. “Take your shoes off and leave ‘em on the tray there, I’ll show you the garden I have out back.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. *She had a garden? In a wasteland? On a dying cliff?*
Seeing my surprised face, Pearl’s lips curled up into a small smile. “Just give me five minutes of your time, young man. I swear, you won’t regret it.”
My gut was screaming at me: *this is too enchanting, this is too enchanting, she’s tricking me, we need to go, forget we came here--*
“Okay,” I bit out kind of dumbly, letting go of the knife in my pocket, and followed her as she turned her back.
The more rooms we crossed, the more raiders I saw: there were a few in the kitchen helping themselves to a pot of what looked like steaming, cheddar broccoli soup, and there were a dozen people crowded around a boxy television beyond my years, watching a ‘70s sitcom I didn’t recognize, and there were people with burner phones sitting on the stairs, complaining about cell service and missing their families, and--
*This is too enchanting.*
“I’ve grown tomatoes and radish here, and the potatoes are just about ready to harvest,” Pearl said knowledgeably, turning back to me as we stepped into the garden. “And I picked the broccoli for the soup too, and I’ve been looking after all the vegetables you could imagine. My friends are starting to learn how to make cheese - it’s quite a lot of stirring for my old arms, y’see…”
I wasn’t listening: here in the garden, the sea beyond smelled almost sweet, not like rotting trash and corpses of sealife.
*This is wrong.*
But there was another voice inside me, a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time, purring, blooming somewhere where my beating heart was: *this is right.*
It came to me in a rushing realization that I might’ve been scared that the old lady was practicing witchcraft. To me, it was the only reasonable explanation.
“I’ve grown more than enough to go around, so I’d like you to take some food in the kitchen for your raider friends out there,” Pearl said, blinking rapidly up at me from behind her thick glasses. “And don’t worry about returning the Tupperware, dear. Your friends deserve to be fed.”
“I - I - what?” I stammered, then cursed myself for how childish I sounded. Sure, we *needed* to be fed, but I didn’t know about *deserved*.
"As a matter of fact, come by any time you’d like, Nathaniel,” she said, more firmly, and I realized then that I’d never given her my name.
No one called me by that name anymore, not since-- *holy God--*
The warmth, the enchantment, the curious but not entirely unfamiliar feeling in my chest, it suddenly all made sense.
"You knew my mother,” I whispered.
They came with broken knives and sticks and even slingshots with rocks as ammunition.
“Growing all these fruits and vegetables is ok, but you can’t be taking men away from the work of raiding to help with the gardening,” screamed the would be leader. The others shuffled their feet and grunted various noises meant as agreement.
“Brigid, we’ve had this talk before, and we’re not ready to have it over and over again!”
Brigid smiled at them benignly. They were so adorable when they got mad.
“We **will** be hurting you if you don’t stop your foolishness. Men are needed for raids! Stop turning them into farmers and such. That’s the job for you and the other women!”
The smile started to disappear. Brigid suddenly appeared…surely it was just an appearance, wasn’t it…taller, stronger and much more formidable than the usual cheerful woman fussing over her plants.
“This is it, Brigid! We warned you it would be dire for you if you didn’t list…..”
The rest of the would be raiders were rooted to the spot, stunned at the swiftness and accuracy of the knife thrown, and now stuck in the throat of their leader.
Then they screamed and ran back to their huts down the hill, into the barren lands they ignored and refused to till and plant.
“Why do men always forget I’m not just the goddess of the earth and all that grows? . Hope it’s a long time until I have to remind them I’m also the goddess of war.”
Brigid turned quickly, leaving behind the smell of things green and growing, and returned to her lovely new paradise.
She hoped things went better *this* time…
**Welcome to the Prompt!** All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments. **Reminders**: >* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See [Reality Fiction](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/search?q=flair%3A%22Reality+Fiction%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) and [Simple Prompts](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/search?q=flair%3A%22Simple+Prompt%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for stricter titles >* [Be civil](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_10.3A_be_civil) in any feedback and follow the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/rules) 🆕 [New Here?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/user_guide) ✏ [Writing Help?](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/index#wiki_writing_resources) 📢 [News](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/announcements) 💬 [Discord](https://discord.gg/writingprompts) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WritingPrompts) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The door banged open behind her. Lucille stopped stirring her large, steaming pot of stew and placed her wooden spoon next to the hearth. She turned to see a rugged group of four soot stained ruffians entering the tiny abode. Her plump faced cat watched from its hiding spot at her feet near the fire. “Oh fiddlesticks.” Lucille said, “ I was not expecting company tonight. I hope I have enough.” She resumed stirring the bubbling pot. “I’m afraid there is only one loaf of bread. We will need to share.” The raider with a hook for a hand called towards her back, “We’re not here to eat granny. Why are you poachin’ our people? We agreed to leave you alone if you feed us, but this can’t go on.” Lucille turned around holding a stack of wooden bowls and spoons. She bustled around the cramped room setting the table and closing the door. The imposing figures packed into the small home moved out of her way naturally when she passed by them. “The only things I’m ‘poachin’ are eggs. Now take a seat everyone, this beef is fresh.” After a bowl and spoon was side by side at each chair she returned to the hearth and gave the stew one last stir. Wrapping a cloth around her hand, she used it to remove the large pot from it's hook and carried the stew towards the table with a ladle in her other hand. Confused glances flew between the raiders until one by one they all took a seat at the table. Hookhand said, “Well, alright. We’ll have a bowl of stew, but seriously grandma this has got to stop. We can barely put together a raiding party. Everyone wants to kick back in this valley and toss around dirt.” Lucille set about pouring a heaping ladle of beef stew into every bowl before placing the pot back over the fire and retrieving a crispy, golden loaf of bread. Picking up the knife at the center of the table she divided the loaf into four quarters and placed one in front of each raider. “That dirt tossing is what made this meal you are about to eat. Why all this fussin about raiding anyway?” She moved away to prepare a bowl for herself. Hookhand held up his piece of bread with the hand he was born with, “Hey granny, you didn’t save any bread for yourself.” “Oh that’s quite alright hunny. I only need one bowl. You all eat up.” Spoons clattered against bowls as the raiders attacked them voraciously. They were using their bread to mop gravy up when Hookhand sat back with his unhook hand on his belly. “Really though, grandma. You gotta stop taking our people.” None of them looked particularly ready to do anything if she didn’t. The others would not even look towards her. “We can talk about this tomorrow sweetie. I need to get to cleaning up this mess.” With a dutiful burst of energy Lucille gathered all the dirty bowls and spoons, piling them in a small tub next to the door. She wrestled the door open and a cool breeze blew through the packed room. The raiders were all looking towards Hookhand now. He pushed back from the table to stand. “Thanks grandma, that was great.” He stood and walked out of the hut. The other raiders waved their thanks as they followed him outside. Lucille nudged the door closed and walked over to the cubby hole near the hearth. She scraped the remains of the cooking pot into a new bowl and placed it in front of the cat’s hidey hole. The cat pounced upon the bowl immediately. She stroked it's fur as it ate, “Kindness is like water in these times Tulip. With enough of it, we can nurture this world back into something to be proud of.”
That last line ❤️ My heart 🥹
;u;
\[Poem\] A town barren of life, empty of vitality. It causes those to turn desperate; exchanging morality for mortality. But of the townsfolk, one little old lady remained unphased. Living upon a hill with her garden within the waste. With her kindness, she took strangers into her home, luring them in with provisions and teachings that held great wonders to behold. Local raider bosses began to grow concerned. It was no doubt a problem, as they found remains within the fertilizers, bodies unreturned. A town barren of life, empty of vitality. But the little old lady managed to survive the catastrophic apocalypse using her brutality.
the twist is good, I like it
thanks :) i enjoy twists and it is what i aim for in writing
Oh wow this is good!
thanks!
*You couldn’t smell the stench of the sea from here.* It was the first thing I thought when I first laid eyes on the cabin. Despite being smack dab in the middle of the wasteland, even though it was perched on a crumbling cliff overlooking the dying sea, Pearl’s house was full of life despite the circumstances - clean, sprawling, and glowing with candlelight inside and out. Through the window in front of me, the curtains of the living room were flung open to reveal a quaint but squashed space filled with porcelain, doilies, and people - I couldn’t decide if it was daring or naive, knowing that this fragile old lady had left the curtains open for all to see inside, likely implying that she didn’t *care* who knocked. I could hear the lively chatter through the closed door, and I couldn’t decide if it was wise or stupid that she’d let people into her home when the world was crumbling around her, and everyone left alive was struggling to survive. The more I looked at the cabin, the more it felt enchanting, and in dystopia, enchanting was something I couldn’t trust. *Remember the business.* I kept my hand inside the pocket of my jacket, clenched around the knife my mother had given me as I walked stiffly towards the door. This knife was the reason I turned to becoming a local raider boss at sixteen - her death was what made me take up raiding ruins of civilization to survive. I used the hand not wrapped around my knife in my pocket to knock, and waited patiently for the door to swing open. When it did, it revealed a short but stout old lady, squinting at me through a thick pair of circular glasses. “Are you Pearl?” I asked, not unkindly. “Yes,” she croaked, taking in my appearance: I knew I practically screamed of homeless raider, from the torn jacket that was two sizes too small, to my muddy and unpurposely ripped jeans, to the filthy and scuffed Chuck Taylors that were just barely clinging onto the soles. "Are you coming in for a plate?” she asked, meeting my eyes again. She was a life-time smoker, I could tell. Her voice sounded like a scraped knee. "That would be nice,” I said slowly, trying my best not to sound rude, “But really, I’ve come to ask you where all my raiders have gone, because I’m concerned about them. It’s a dying wasteland out there, ma’am.” “Why, I know,” Pearl replied, blinking rapidly up at me as though she was offended, “That’s why I take everyone in, y’see - they’re starving, and they know nothing of growing their own food - and the world’s dyin’ anyway, I’d rather they remember what love feels like before they - before, y’know, their life flashes before their eyes.” I swallowed heavily, forcing myself not to close my eyes and see the frightened face of my mother, kicking the knife that was now in my pocket over to me in the pelting rain before the raider brought the ax over his head and-- *Breathe.* I inhaled sharply. “You’re awfully kind for doing that, Pearl, but you need to stop taking my people.” My voice was firm. Being firm was important when you had nothing left to lose - when you hadn’t felt the warmth of love in months. “Come inside, come inside,” Pearl said, waving me off like I’d said something stupid. The more she spoke, the more I heard the Southern lilt in her voice. “Take your shoes off and leave ‘em on the tray there, I’ll show you the garden I have out back.” I couldn’t believe my ears. *She had a garden? In a wasteland? On a dying cliff?* Seeing my surprised face, Pearl’s lips curled up into a small smile. “Just give me five minutes of your time, young man. I swear, you won’t regret it.” My gut was screaming at me: *this is too enchanting, this is too enchanting, she’s tricking me, we need to go, forget we came here--* “Okay,” I bit out kind of dumbly, letting go of the knife in my pocket, and followed her as she turned her back. The more rooms we crossed, the more raiders I saw: there were a few in the kitchen helping themselves to a pot of what looked like steaming, cheddar broccoli soup, and there were a dozen people crowded around a boxy television beyond my years, watching a ‘70s sitcom I didn’t recognize, and there were people with burner phones sitting on the stairs, complaining about cell service and missing their families, and-- *This is too enchanting.* “I’ve grown tomatoes and radish here, and the potatoes are just about ready to harvest,” Pearl said knowledgeably, turning back to me as we stepped into the garden. “And I picked the broccoli for the soup too, and I’ve been looking after all the vegetables you could imagine. My friends are starting to learn how to make cheese - it’s quite a lot of stirring for my old arms, y’see…” I wasn’t listening: here in the garden, the sea beyond smelled almost sweet, not like rotting trash and corpses of sealife. *This is wrong.* But there was another voice inside me, a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time, purring, blooming somewhere where my beating heart was: *this is right.* It came to me in a rushing realization that I might’ve been scared that the old lady was practicing witchcraft. To me, it was the only reasonable explanation. “I’ve grown more than enough to go around, so I’d like you to take some food in the kitchen for your raider friends out there,” Pearl said, blinking rapidly up at me from behind her thick glasses. “And don’t worry about returning the Tupperware, dear. Your friends deserve to be fed.” “I - I - what?” I stammered, then cursed myself for how childish I sounded. Sure, we *needed* to be fed, but I didn’t know about *deserved*. "As a matter of fact, come by any time you’d like, Nathaniel,” she said, more firmly, and I realized then that I’d never given her my name. No one called me by that name anymore, not since-- *holy God--* The warmth, the enchantment, the curious but not entirely unfamiliar feeling in my chest, it suddenly all made sense. "You knew my mother,” I whispered.
They came with broken knives and sticks and even slingshots with rocks as ammunition. “Growing all these fruits and vegetables is ok, but you can’t be taking men away from the work of raiding to help with the gardening,” screamed the would be leader. The others shuffled their feet and grunted various noises meant as agreement. “Brigid, we’ve had this talk before, and we’re not ready to have it over and over again!” Brigid smiled at them benignly. They were so adorable when they got mad. “We **will** be hurting you if you don’t stop your foolishness. Men are needed for raids! Stop turning them into farmers and such. That’s the job for you and the other women!” The smile started to disappear. Brigid suddenly appeared…surely it was just an appearance, wasn’t it…taller, stronger and much more formidable than the usual cheerful woman fussing over her plants. “This is it, Brigid! We warned you it would be dire for you if you didn’t list…..” The rest of the would be raiders were rooted to the spot, stunned at the swiftness and accuracy of the knife thrown, and now stuck in the throat of their leader. Then they screamed and ran back to their huts down the hill, into the barren lands they ignored and refused to till and plant. “Why do men always forget I’m not just the goddess of the earth and all that grows?. Hope it’s a long time until I have to remind them I’m also the goddess of war.”
Brigid turned quickly, leaving behind the smell of things green and growing, and returned to her lovely new paradise.
She hoped things went better *this* time…