FFftPP: Hold high the lantern, love

https://pixabay.com/en/lantern-old-lantern-brush-sack-316689/

‘Hold high the lantern, love,’ she whispered, her skirts sighing in the long grass.

He did as he was asked, stumbling over tussocks, the scrub and dash of barren moor. The moon disk beam of lamplight shone over skittering voles, rabbits bobbing away from their midnight feasts of grass. Once he glimpsed the golden mirrored eyes of a vixen who stopped to watch them, a cousin of the feasting conies hanging from her vice tight jaws.

He didn’t falter, didn’t wish to see.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked, the only reply the swish of skirts, her gasps of effort, fleeting as the breeze.

Finally, she stopped. ‘You brought the shovel?’ She took it from him, the weight swinging like a pendulum from bone fine hands.

His breath was ragged from walking, he thought – until he saw the shovel swing higher, felt sharp pins of fear pricking at him.

‘You should never have strayed,’ was all he heard as the shovel fell.

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Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practioner. See here for full Ts and Cs.