Fiction Friday: Adventurer

Perhaps you remember my brief attempt to write six word fiction? Well, I’ve discovered a new flash fiction challenge – six sentence fiction. Easier to write yet harder at the same time, though all around more satisfying to read. Peruse the offerings at Six Sentences and you’ll see what I mean.

The idea of crafting a beginning, middle, & end in six sentences excites my creative mind, so I’m going to try as many as I can until I’m published on Six Sentences. Here’s my first attempt, written late at night:

Adventurer

The globe in her father’s office was old, fading, and from an age of self-education and discovery that had long since moved online, but it was her father’s, so it always been her favorite thing as a child. She spun it lazily with the tips of her fingers, taking in all the countries that no longer existed – Yugoslavia, the USSR, one Korea – remembering all the nights she’d spent memorizing the places her father had traveled, preparing to regale him with her extensive knowledge of the exotic locales which he’d just been experiencing firsthand. It was a futile exercise – she could see that now – but her father had indulged her each time, smiling pleasantly through his pain, listening with all the focus he could muster in his exhausted state. “Being me has its downsides,” he’d always said, even though he’d be back out the door days later. She stared at the globe now, wondering where her father had lost his way so many years ago, and praying for the millionth time that he would eventually find his way home. Twenty-five years was far too long of an adventure, even for him.