FFfAW : How passionless – how bloodless

Thank you Louise, with The Storyteller’s Abode, for our photo prompt this week!

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It was as she read Norman’s proposal of marriage that Phyllis realised she didn’t love him and that he would never love her.

The document laid out in reasonable terms why they should marry – from financial considerations, through to them both being moderately attractive so they would no doubt produce tolerable looking offspring.

All very logical, written in Norman’s neat script, the handwriting of a Victorian spinster, Phyllis had always thought.

She’d never heard of anyone being proposed to by letter. Her sister Irene had been swept off her feet by her blue-coated lancer, cheeks still flushed from the chase as she waddled down the aisle.

How cold and unfeeling Norman seemed by comparison, with the chart showing his projected income over the coming ten years, his list of material assets, the improbabilty of him losing his hair prior to his dottage.

How passionless it all seemed – how bloodless.

But then, Irene’s lancer has soon been skewered in battle, leaving her penniless and screaming as the soldier’s brat clawed its way out of her belly.

And besides, Norman’s father had died young too, victim to a weak heart – a hereditary condition Norman had failed to mention in his proposal …

Phyllis reached for her pen, laid a fresh sheet of paper on her writing desk.

Dear Norman …

 

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Written for Pricelees Joy’s Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. See the picture and write a tale. See here to join in and to read the other tales.