June’s Pictonaut Challenge

May has finished its set. Greeted by half felt applause and empty cheers it shuffles off the stage. The audience is restless, hungry and ever so slightly damp. No one was here to see the support act. May was just a sad prelude to what is yet to come. Everyone is here for the headline acts. The gathered multitudes begin to ripple and sway. Feet are stamped in a harsh and demanding staccato beat. It’s primal, they want something and they want it bad. They’ve been waiting for a long time, through disappointment, through the rain and the frost that just wouldn’t go away. They bay in a language with no words but which is understandable to all. The sad acoustic set of May is forgotten as June takes centre stage. The amps have been dialled up to 11 and the bass is strong enough to shatter bone. Things are about to get hot. Electrically hot.

Tortured metaphors aside, summer is here even if its entourage of appropriate weather hasn’t quite made it yet. It’s June and we have another Pictonaut Challenge to occupy ourselves with. This month we have The Tower on the Hill.

This is a picture I took at the back-end of last summer. It stands on the very top of a steep hill, nestled among a rolling sea of equally steep hills, somewhere in the vast open expanse of the English countryside. In many ways it reminds me of The Reliquary, in that its purpose is not initially apparent, it’s mysterious and intriguing. Unlike The Reliquary it was taken under crystal clear skies and a heat that pounded on your skin like the hammer of Vulcan himself. It does have a slight fantasy vibe, but that’s generally unavoidable when you combine grass and weathered masonry.

A quick reminder as to the nature of this challenge: You have the span of 1 month to produce 1,000 words based upon this here image. Be it a poem, a tale, a mini-saga or short-story. I call them wordascopes.

And if the weather improves you can even do all this “writing” outside through the medium of a dark, forgotten and utterly arcane piece of near lost technology called “pen and paper”