A tidal response to religious persecution.
Photo credit: John Vonderlin
The A&B Building was made entirely from driftwood. It was built as a temple to Xangan, using only gifts from the sea goddess.
Aqa, the trader next door, distrusted these foreign gods. Only Sambar and Sambar’s children were worthy of worship. Accusing the Xangana of unpaid debt—falsely—he seized their building, evicting them.
The Xangana appealed, but the Sambaran authorities ruled against them.
Aqa opened a tavern with his brother Balzan. It horrified the Xangana, watching their temple desecrated by drunken, loutish heathens.
Eventually, the Xangana found land to purchase, far across the bay. On their empty, stony beach, they prayed to Xangan for sea-blessed driftwood.
That night, huge waves attacked the port, sweeping the A&B Building, among others, out to sea. Many drowned, including Aqa and Balzan.
The dawn light shone on piles of debris washed up on the Xangana’s patch of shoreline—wood, metals, glass, even gold.
The rebuilt temple was twice as grand.
This is my response to this week’s Monday Finish the Story challenge, where the first sentence (above) is provided, along with a photo prompt, and you have to finish with no more than 150 additional words. This week’s photo prompt is of the Arctic Brotherhood Hall in Skagway, Alaska, which I visited a couple summers ago. Very cool building! Click on the blue froggy below to read everyone else’s stories based on this prompt.
© Barbara W. Beachman
Neat.
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Thanks!
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Nicely written story. Looks like justice was served at the end.
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It sure was! Desecrating someone’s temple doesn’t *always* result in revenge from the gods in this world but gee, it happens often enough that you’d think people would think twice. 😉
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Very interesting take on the prompt. Got to be careful not to anger those gods. 🙂
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It would be wise not to, yes! Thanks for reading!
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Great story! I love the glimpse we get of the Xangana religion. Honoring the sea goddess by building a temple out of driftwood is such a great idea that I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it. lol
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Oo, envy over having not thought of the idea yourself is a great compliment, I’ll take it — thank you!
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I appreciate your entry into theMondays Finish the Story Challenge. May I make a simple request? That would be to follow the rules of the writing challenge. 🙂 You may go off track only one week per month, which I allow others to do. Again, I appreciate your entry and thank you for taking the time to write this story for this challenge. Be well… ^..^
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Hi, I’m sorry, I thought I was following the rules. I used the first sentence, I added fewer than 150 words to it, and I included the photo. Did I miss something — what part do you mean is off-track? I use a non-modern photo for the top picture to keep in line with the theme of my blog (since modern buildings would not exist in Eneana). Do you require that I put the photo prompt at the top of the post?
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Some call it Karma, some call it Justice, to others it’s comeuppance. I guess it doesn’t matter what name you assign it, the results are the same.
Well written story here. I liked it a lot.
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Revenge by any other name smells as sweet? 🙂 Thanks, glad you liked it!
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I think that is great that the old desecrated temple (along with the men who desecrated it) were swept out to sea and were wiped out, while all new materials were washed into land for them to build a new temple. Great story Joy!
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Thanks, Joy! I ran out of words to explain this, but what washed up on the other shore for the Xangana to use is actually the debris from their old temple and the buildings near it — now washed clean and blessed (reconsecrated) by the sea. So they got their old temple back, plus a lot more!
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Oh, that is great! I didn’t realize that.
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That’s the thing with these little flash pieces, isn’t it? I’m continually surprised at how much any of us can get across in just 100 words or just 150, but so often there are other interesting bits and pieces that you can’t squeeze in there. But hey, there’s always the comments section!
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One may distrust these foreign gods, but one must never underestimate their power. Great story!
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Thanks Ali! And yes, these gods may ignore mortals most of the time, but it’s risky to assume they’re not paying attention if you’re going to desecrate a temple!
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Gosh, I’ll think I’ll be a bit careful about commenting on this one. Don’t want to say anything to upset you-know-who.
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Xangan? As long as you don’t esecrate-day her emple-tay, you should be fine. 😉
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Look, here I am walking around the outside of the temple very respectfully. I’ve taken the bag off my head and everything. Please don’t let Xangan smite me! 😀
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Sounds reasonable, but you might want to head farther inland, just to be safe. Never know when someone *else* is going to cause trouble, and clearly that would be a bad time to be standing on the docks. 😉
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I really enjoy how you weave the prompts into your existing world. It must be tricky sometimes, but you make it look easy 🙂
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Thank you — making it look easy is a great compliment, I’m flattered! Yes, it can be challenging sometimes, but that makes it more fun for me. It helps to be involved in more writing prompts than I could possibly do in one week, because a lot of the prompts just will not work at all. Now the *really* challenging thing is going to be maintaining continuity checks over time. I try to remember to add these new bits into my documentation files, but who knows how many details I’ve forgotten?
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Oh, yes, that would be challenging, wouldn’t it, keeping track of all the details. Well, maybe you can claim that everything in flash fiction is apocryphal? I read an article about Star Wars the other day, they’ve apparently declared a whole lot of their stories to be ‘alternate universe’ and not part of the official canon… Okay, now that I’ve written that, the whole thing annoyed me, so maybe don’t do that. I’ll stop rambling now 😀
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That “not canon” stuff annoyed me too, so I will definitely try to avoid doing it myself!
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