This week’s photo writing prompt courtesy of Sue Vincent’s fun #writephoto challenge is entitled “harbinger”.

Well, I now know a lot more about magpies and its seem their reputation is well deserved. They are one of only a handful of animals (including humans) that can recognise themselves in a mirror. Anyway, it’s a given its going to be difficult to write anything about a magpie without a hint of Poe, so this short story is a little on the dark side, you have been warned (~710 words).

Angrily, he kicked his way through the autumnal wood. He’d slipped away whilst no was looking.

How could she! It was meant to be just the two of them, he was her world, she’d said it, every day. Through tearing eyes, he took his anger out on a large oak tree, fists landed bluntly against its trunk. The pain only made him madder and he tugged at the low hanging branches until one finally snapped. It caught him off balance and he stumbled, sobbing, into a pile of leaves.

“Liar!” he yelled, at the memory of her soft kiss on his forehead. He smashed the splintered branch against the ground.

“How dare she!” he hissed, panting he stared down at bloody knuckles. She would not soothe these cuts, he would not let her.

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