It’s time for my latest offering to Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction, a weekly prompt where there is no word limit, just a limit on the number of sentences. Plus, although she provides a word prompt, it is just for direction only – you don’t have to include the word itself in your contribution.

This week, the prompt is  – THUNDER.

Do let me know what you think of my offering below – and whilst you’re at it, why not take a look at everyone else’s offerings (I’m sure they’ll be fabulous), and even give it a go yourself…

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– Ysbryd y Mwynwyr –

If you lay your hands flat against the earth, you can feel the souls of the lost and the forgotten reaching out to you for recognition.

I feel that here, even on a cheerful day in August; the scars incised on the landscape, the tumbledown mine-workings, the iron ore spilling its livid orange hue over smooth stones ensconced in the glass-clear streams – these are the obvious markers of times past.

Pause for a moment, tune your ears to the undertow that pulls your heart, your thoughts, your very breath past the calm sounds of nature; beyond the brook burbling at your feet, beyond the birds soaring in the azure above your head.

This serene valley was once filled with the roar of vast waterwheels, smoke, steam, pounding hammers and picks, chipping and hacking and the shouting of men.

The thunder of industry echoed around these mountains; the clamour of humanity, the spirit of the miners, reverberates within us now, never to be lost.

Copyright – Freya

*** Ysbryd Y Mwynwyr is Welsh and means Spirit of the Miners. It is a community regeneration project that set out to create an identity for northern Ceredigion using the legacy of metal mining as a theme for regeneration. The project mainly focused on the human, social and community aspects of mining culture. In short, the very reason why many of the upland villages exist. Please see the Ysbryd Y Mwnwyr website for further information, and if you ever visit Wales, I can highly recommend the area as a region to visit. It is stunning.