dycefic:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: The houses grew straight out of the ground. Their crooked door
dycefic:deepwaterwritingprompts:Text: The houses grew straight out of the ground. Their crooked doors had been formed by the earth itself. Uli was thefirst to find this place. There was only one house then, a strange and crookedthing of packed earth, roofed with daub and flat stones, its door a misshapenslab of thin rock swinging on thick roots. Uli found it when he was wanderingalone and destitute, close to death. He had turned off the road, seeking aplace to lie down and die. Then, he says, the trees parted before him, and he founda little clearing, with a strange little house. When he entered,it was strange within as well. But he found a bed-box filled with dried grassand bracken, water in a stone bowl, and fresh vegetables and fruits lying on a stoneshelf. He ate, and drank, and lay down to sleep.Almost halfa year later, a new house began to emerge from the ground. He said it grew outof the ground not like a tree, slender at first then growing outward, but likea stone emerging from sinking flood-water, whole and complete. When it wasfinished growing, he went inside, to find three box beds, and three stone bowls.He had a garden, then – everything grew there, in the rich forest earth, sofast as to be uncanny – and he had found the overgrown remains of an orchard.So he placed food in the new house, thinking to repay his debt. That night, Albinaand her children stumbled out of the trees, thin and weak. He showed them thehouse that was meant for them, and the food, and they ate, and drank, and slept,and in the morning they arose and began to plant their own garden.When I cameto the village there were six houses, including mine. I had fled from a husbandfree with his fists and miserly with food for a mere wife, walking until my shoeswore through and my feet bled. Lost in the forest, about to drop from exhaustion,I found a path that led me to the strange little village. The people who lived therewelcomed me, leading me to the house that was meant for me. There were morecomforts there than there had been in the first few houses, I learned later. Whena new houses began to grow, everyone had prepared a welcome. I had a bed coveredwith furs and woven blankets, carved wooden cups and dishes, food and tools andeverything I might need. There was atiny box bed in my house, though I didn’t need it yet. When my child was born,Albina and Maike assisted in the delivery. The hunters, Franz and Nikolaus,brought me meat to eat, and rabbit fur to wrap my baby in. When the seventhhouse grew, I was already knitting a woolen blanket for the bed. Keep reading -- source link