My first piece for #write-in for #nffd2026. For prompt #2, a story that had to start and end with the same line within 100 words, etc. …
Thanks to editors @natflashfictionday.bsky.social
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C. Oulens
The Write-In: 'The Way is Open' by C. Oulens #nffd2026
As if there was a way out! Ever!
The first arch of her eyebrows — the left raised slightly higher — pierced him and hovered. Down they fell, the arrow returning with what she sought.
“Words, anyway, are a waste of breath,” she’d say. Yet she knew how to know.
Arch after arch stripped him of disguises, rehearsed selves. Each lowering brought him out, leaving something of her inside: a movement, a habit, ways of seeing rain, squirrels, pain, silence.
“The way is open,” she announced one day, her arch gone. A smile curving. As if there was a way out. Ever.
