Flash Fiction #8 - Not For the Last Time

Picture Prompt

300-word Flash Fiction

Post # 8

Week Ending: 08/01/2025

Genre: Fantasy

Title: Not For The Last Time

   People compared nervousness to having butterflies inside them. Jonathan disagreed. He was certain they were dragons. The beating of his heart pounded his chest, like the powerful flapping of scaley, webbed wings. The fire they exhaled burned unbearably under his skin. The turning of his guts, perpetrated by scores of them, flocking in unpredictable patterns. 

   Jonathan stood, peering back once more into the room where he and his men toiled around the octagonal oak table, built into the mighty pillar in the center of the weathered wooden floor. He sought to emulate that very pillar. Spectacular to look at. Shaped by an artisan with refined corners, bevels, and magnificent grooves, representing the honor, dignity, chivalry, and duty that his mentors had engrained within him. He strove to provide strength and support to the men who now believed in him as their pillar of leadership. 

   He stared, without focus on what was in front of him, his mind’s eye envisioning the battle to come. The golden glow of the light, seeping into the room through the recessed windows of the stone-walled room, whisked his thoughts away to the glow that the sun would be casting over the distant horizon at dawn when the insurgence would begin. 

   Maps, models, scouting trips, and long-learned tactics went into the painstaking planning of their strategies. He spent hours preparing his men with information, weeks training them for what to expect when they met their foes. This battle would mean either freedom, or death, to the people of their town. They would either overthrow the tyrants or be decimated. They'd come to a point where either result would be better than the life they had been ruled into.  Jonathan prayed, as he turned to exit the great room, that it was not for the last time.  

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