Fandango’s Flash Fiction # 106 ~ Arapaho

Welcome to “Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.” Each week I will be posting a photo I grab off the internet and challenging bloggers to write a flash fiction piece or a poem inspired by the photo. There are no style or word limits.

Heneecéé was the word of Jason’s ancestors for bison. The Arapaho were actually referred to as the “bison-path people”. This land was his soul.
Today’s visit to the site of his birth, did not disappoint. The landscape, as it had been for millennia, was breathtaking. Bison had made quite a comeback and those he was currently watching seemed as comfortable and “at home” on the prairie as he. As he drank in the jagged blue peaks pointing defiantly into the sky, he recalled his grandfather’s story about the sky and the earth embroiled in an ancient and unending battle.
In the time before time, the Earth was completely flat. A family could walk in one direction for a lifetime and never climb a single mountain or descend into a valley. The sky was SO large that it thought it was the greatest of all creations. The sky boasted and bragged becoming so self-important that the Earth finally had had enough! She had been quite content slumbering under the sun but the sky was becoming a terrible nuisance. The ground began to shake and Mother Earth turned onto her side. Her hip and shoulder prodded the sky creating a mountain chain. Then she rolled on her back and bent her knees. Even taller peaks appeared. This defiant intrusion threw the sky into a rage! Father Sky shouted winds of nasty words and waved tornadoes punching at her. She ignored him. Then the sky grew dark with more fury, throwing flooding rain that rolled down her back creating valleys! The earth laughed and pointed her fingers at the sky. The sky’s tantrum continues to this day. But his strength is waning, as he ages, so he must rest in between his fits. We get quiet blue beautiful days, like these, when he sleeps. Those mountains are Earth’s fingers making fun of him, still.
Jason smiled. He squinted at the beautiful blue fingers along the horizon then lift his face toward the sky and shouted, ” I’ve yet to win an argument with a woman either, old man!”.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #106 – This, That, and The Other (fivedotoh.com)