Writing game 4 - based on Hills Like White Elephants

200 words – based on Hills Like White Elephants, by Ernest Hemingway: (oh, and it's fiction, I suppose.)

The pathway

They walked down the pathway with dust swishing around them.

‘So… have you decided what to do yet,?’ the elderly looking woman asked.

‘No’.

The young girl’s eyes strayed off the pathway and out into nothingness. With an obvious sadness she dragged her eyes back onto the old, used road. It was barren and indifferent with no life to it. At some point some people must have decided not to bother anymore – to leave it be and let it die. Or maybe the road lost interest and decided not to fight all the dust and carelessness anymore.

‘You need to decide’, the woman pushed on.

‘Why?,’ asked the girl, curiously glancing up from her hooded visage.

‘Dear child, we all need to make choices and sacrifices, you know this,’ she said in a shocked tone. She dusted off her robe.

She glanced away, yet again looking towards horizon and the setting sun. She stopped abruptly, carefully scrutinizing the old woman’s face. Mostly it looked like she had bitten down on a very sour lemon years earlier and her face had frozen into that expression and wrinkles had set on top of it all.

‘I cannot. I will not’, she said, throwing down her cross and rushing away.