Romantic Friday Writers Challenge 46 : Birthday Madness

Warmest birthday wishes to the creators of RFW, Denise Covey and Donna Hole.  It’s time for the fun RFW Challenge, and this time it celebrates the joint October birthdays of the hosts.

The fortnightly challenge at RFW is held every alternate Friday. Membership is not mandatory for participation, so if you like writing, then do go over and see if you want to give it a try.  Go over anyway, because there are some amazing stories and poems linked there, and reading them always gives the day a little lift.

Here is my entry for the challenge:

The reams of formalities, the microbial security scanning, all the endless paraphernalia over finally, Tony walks briskly into the departure lounge.  It is already filling up with waiting passengers, empty seats are few.  It hits him again with fresh force, he really is on his way to meet Larissa!  This journey is a first for him in many ways.

He finds a seat and then texts her, “On my way!”

She instantly replies, ”Can’t wait!” 

He is amazed by this coincidence too, she awake across the vast distance that separates them, at precisely this hour.  He wonders how time plays out where she is.

The trip has come about randomly.  He has never been into social networking.  It was meant to be a light-hearted lark, he got into cPlanext solely to enter the contest, never thinking that he’ll actually win it.  He’d send off his answers; maybe make some new contacts; try this virtual social platform that’s become the rage.  That’s it. 

But it so happened that was not it.  He sent off the quiz and forgot it.  And then he got a request from Larissa.  From the first, he felt such a deep sense of connection.  Which he later learnt was mutual. 

She put it in her usual quaint way, “Like a clamshell finding its other half finally!” 

She always makes an effort to communicate in ways he can relate, in terms taken from his own seaside milieu. Unlike him, she has travelled widely, even been to his part of the planet.

She was the first person he spoke to when he learnt he’d won.   One unrestricted return trip, anywhere, within the year 3024.

She’d responded joyously, ”Come for my birthday.  It will be a grand celebration, the best gift. Please, please come.”

So here he is, a little nervous yet heady, indulging in a bit of birthday madness.  He’s made the gift himself, each glass bead swirled with a different colour at its centre, seventeen beads for the seventeen known planets, threaded into a sparkling bracelet.  He feels a little anxious now thinking of it.  Glass making is not a hobby she is likely familiar with, glass itself has died out centuries ago, he’s among the few trying to revive an ancient artform.

The PA system crackles,”Flight AS 9061 to Mars is now ready for boarding.  Passengers are requested....”

He walks out eagerly to the spacebridge.

WC-399
FCA