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It’s a double-whammy this week, as I’m incorporating both Julia’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown Ups (week 57) prompt of “…returning to the routine…” and Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction prompt “AWKWARD” into the same post. Actually, it’s a triple whammy, since I’m also using Monday’s Fearless post to coincide.

To catch you up, Julia’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups gives writers a phrase or picture prompt, and we have 100 words (give or take; see the link for details) to write a story around it. Lillie’s Five-Sentence Fiction gives a one-word prompt, and we’re to write a flash fiction piece, consisting of only five sentences, that corresponds to said prompt.

I didn’t think I’d be able to participate at all this time around, as my schedule has been so hectic…but the pieces just fell together right, for me. (Maybe you disagree.)

“Hope In You”

By Zelda F. Scott (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The bar turned slick beneath her hands, and her arms quivered all the way to her shoulders as her foot slid over the mat. It wasn’t from any thought or impulse, though, but mere weight, and that more than any pain or effort made the tears well.

Graceful, darling dancer: she’d never be that again, not if simply returning to the routine of standing on her dumb, labouring legs was this hard.

Spitting a plea for rest (and hating herself for it), she transferred to the chair, feeling weak, broken, hopeless.

Until she thought of him, and his smile, and pushed herself up again.

Julia’s prompt is a bit easier to recognize, here, than Lillie’s is, but hopefully you can see how I related this to both.

What awkwardness – or return to routine – did you describe, this time around?