(A couple of weeks ago, my wife suggested I enter a writing contest. The rules required the story to be no more than 100 words, but more than that, they required entrants to write the story in less than 24 hours. To ensure everyone played by the rules, the contest runners assigned each writer a genre, an action that had to take place in the story, and a word that the writer had to include, and they emailed out the assignment when the 24 hour clock began. Based on my assignment, here is my entry.)
Penelope
The poet smells her before he hears her. Her scent cuts through the mucky goat hair, the sour horseshit, and the human piss and sweat. It calls him back to an earlier spring, before he grew blind, when his neighbor’s sister twirled through the heather, stirring the pollen into the air. The poet turns, his nose searching. A warmth moves across his arm and stays, raising his temperature. She speaks a language he doesn’t understand, full of power and beauty. His heart fills with love, and he drops to his knee in prayer. He promises to sing her heart eternal.