Elma is a new serial #freewrite story I started last Sunday. In #Freewrite Land, Saturday is the end of the week, marked by the #WeekendFreewrite, so I thought I would celebrate by bringing together all this weeks Elma story and do a reading too. The next instalment of Elma will be Sunday.

Note: 50% of the SBD payout of this post will go to the @freewritehouse

The reading:

Elma. (Prompt: Basket)

@felt.buzz/elma-a-five-minute-freewrite

Elma loved her basket. She had bought it in a market whilst on holiday in a strange little country somewhere in the middle of Europe.

The country doesn't exist any more. It disappeared during one of the small civil wars. It wasn't swallowed up by a neighbouring country, it just disappeared. Fed up with it's feuding neighbours it just decided to go it alone and popped off to another dimension, leaving a ten mile square patch of nothingness in central Europe.

Elma liked to think that the basket had brought with it some of its country's magic, and that if she was ever in trouble she could use it to escape.

One day, she was able to test this theory.

It was a bright sunny day, but the clouds were gathering on the mountain ridge, and they looked pissed. Elma needed to go to the shops and couldn't decide whether to go out in short sleeves or to put on her raincoat. She opted on short sleeves, with the raincoat stuffed into her basket...

Hot House (prompt: House Coat)

@felt.buzz/hot-house-a-five-minute-freewrite-prompt-house-coat

As Elma strolled up the road, swinging her basket back and forth, she saw her friend Dora wave to her from her garden.

"What about this weather, then!" Dora said, by way of a greeting. "It doesn't know what it's doing. It was so cold last week I bought a house coat."

Elma nodded. It had been cold last week.

"Now," Dora continued. "My poor house doesn't know what to do."

She pointed in the direction of her little two up, two down house that sat at the end of the garden in a very warm looking parka coat. Elma thought she could see beads of sweat running down what little brickwork was left exposed.

"Perhaps you should take it off, dear," Elma said. "You don't want your house collapsing due to heat exhaustion. Not sure the insurance would cover that."

Dora nodded.

"You're right. I'll get our Fred to get his ladder out and take the coat off. Mind you," she pointed at the mountains. "Looks like trouble's ahead. Look at those storm clouds. They look menacing."

Elma did look at the clouds. Dora was right, they looked as mean as a swarm of wasps in a blender...

Rain (prompt: nail)

@felt.buzz/rain-a-five-minute-freewrite

Elma waved goodbye to Dora, and marched towards the town, her basket in her hand. She needed to get back before that storm broke: the clouds were gathering thick and fast. She made it half way there before she felt the first spot of rain.

Except it wasn't a "spot" of rain.

It came from the sky like a nail shot from a gun, stinging her skin like a hornet.

"Ouch!" she yelled, so loud that a passerby looked up in surprise from her smartphone.

Bloody hell, Elma thought. That hurt like hell.
Another bullet of rain hit her on the head and she felt a bruise rise up under her hair. This was not normal rain, she decided. There was a bus shelter just up ahead so she put her basket over her head, as protection, and ran as fast as she could.

Safe under the shelter, she watched as the rain began to fall (no, not fall - shoot) from the sky, in earnest, the pavement around her began to pit and break up under the strength of the attack.

Beehive Yourself (prompt: a picture prompt - see this post

@felt.buzz/beehive-yourself-a-5-minute-freewrite

Elma sat in the bus shelter and watched the rain smash down around her. She worried that the shelter itself might not be able to survive much more of a pummelling.

She toyed with the idea of making a dash for it, but a car came screeching around the corner, all dents and no glass and a what looked like a very scared old man driving it, and she decided that if the rain didn't kill her, then someone trying to escape it most likely would.

She removed the basket from her head and tapped her beehive hair style back into place. She used so many products to keep it that way that it hardly moved, but she could feel a hole, where the rain "drop" had driven it's way through to her head.

She watched the end of the world around her and was suddenly reminded of a dream she had of a sad and confused all-seeing woman who reeked havoc on the Earth with the power of her mind. Elma wondered if that was what was happening. She often had strange dreams and some of them did seem to predict future events...

Basket of dreams (prompt: Cane)

@felt.buzz/basket-of-dreams-a-5-minute-freewrite

Come to think of it, Elma had only started to have the vivid dreams that seemed so real, and seemed to come true in some way, after she had visited Europe - and more specifically Goodbyenicetoavseenya, the small country that simply disappeared one day.

In fact, she thought as the rain crashed into the shelter above her head, the dreams started after she bought the very basket she held in her hand.

She remembered the day she bought the basket as clearly as if it were yesterday. She remembered the smell of the market, the colours of all the strange vegetables and the sounds of people speaking the strange mixture of languages that seemed so foreign and at the same time familar. The basket seller, a woman bent with age and a lifetime of hard work, waved her cane at Elma as she strolled past.

"Come buy this basket!" she shouted and pointed her cane at a beautiful woven basket at her feet. "It will bring you luck and adventure. And all your dreams will come true!"

Elma had laughed. She thought the woman was exaggerating, trying to sell her something that could not be...

Predictions (prompt: a ridiculous amount of fun)

@felt.buzz/predictions-a-5-minute-freewrite

Elma bought the basket from the old woman, despite her scepticism. It was cheap - the strange wooden money, heavy and worn, seemed to go a long way, here, but even so the basket was almost given away - and also it had a strange pattern woven into it that attracted Elma's eye. She couldn't stop looking at it.

The old woman tried to give Elma change - in dried beans - but she refused it with a shake of her head.

"You keep it," Elma said. The woman thanked her with a toothless grin. She waved her cane at Elma and said something in her language that Elma couldn't understand. A man standing next to her laughed. In halting English he translated for her.

"She say you will live long life," he said. "You love lots and you have ridiculous amount of fun." Elma smiled at the man and the old woman.

"Thank you," she said. "I hope I do."

The old man said something to the market seller and she shook her head.

"I try to buy same basket," he said. "But she say only one like yours. I make do with carrier bag."