The first time I can remember crying at a movie was when Mum took us to see Bambi in the theatre at Brisbane city. It was a big deal. Five of us, excited and ready for city theatre adventure. We were big. I was five. I was real big. Second oldest. I had responsibilities to look after those younger and less capable than me.

When Bambi's mother was shot, my faith in human kind was shattered. At that point, well, somewhere within my raking sobs and stifled chokes because people were hushing me, I decided to dedicate my life to wildlife protection. I would ensure that the Bambis of the world NEVER had to suffer those wretched feelings of murder, abandonment, fear and deprivation again.


I never really worked out why I did Vet Science. DUH! I studied at Durban, South Africa,  but was keen to move into the African countries that had game parks and plenty of need for a vet woman. None of them wanted women though. The poaching and civil wars made woman game park staff fair game.

I got my break though when a tiny Elephant calf survived her mother being shot and butchered in front of her. Why the poachers left her I don't know, but I am grateful to them because those poachers made my dreams come true. Baby Elleph was immediately sold to a Zoo in my home town. I was heading home, baby. Heading home to chaperon a 150 kilo baby.

My contract called for the safe delivery to Australia Zoo, straight into the arms of Steve and Terri Irwin. I could then have three days off to see family and return to Durban for regular duties. Not bloody likely, mate. Crikey!

Steve Irwin offered me the care position before I had to ask. There was no way I was leaving Elleph and I was prepared to become an unemployed Vet in the Elephant House of Australia Zoo for the rest of my life. I guess Steve and Terri weren't all Hollywood focused like the accusations going around said. They saw Elelph's connection to me and the acted in her best interest. They paid me to be Bambi's mummy.

Life has been kind to Elleph. I often wonder at the effect of the early trauma on her. I have seen no signs of malfunctioning Elephant but Elleph, I am sure, has seen signs of malfunctioning Vet Woman in me. Every time a musical rendition of Disney's Bambi carries into my annex, I cry. I sob. I break my heart for those abandoned and left for dead. Unlike all those years ago thought, when I was shushed and my sorrow canned, a wet sniffy trunk seeks out my hair and tussles it around, just like I did to Ellep the day her mother was shot.



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

The tail of her velvet gown draped across the water like a magic net drawing fish from below and dragon fly from above. Her suitor held her hand, to balance her, and to steal the scent of her skin. Lavender and sunshine she smelt of. Good, wholesome,bewitchingly gorgeous.

She had just returned from abroad and yearned the freedom of home and the coven of the forest. He had no idea. Never would he be allowed to the circle. Never would he get to hold more than her balancing hand.

Her frock clung to her body and displayed her supple womanliness. He bent as though to kiss her, she bent to scoop a baby green frog. He pretended to care about the wildlife and stay stooped as though in concern for an endangered species.

Her spark caught his thoughts in the dream catcher of her long black hair. She smiled at his juvenile attempt to capture her lust. She was not interested in him. Her only desire was for the circle, for the dancing, for the naked dancing with her sisters under the liquid golden moon drops of summer.

Young though she was, her earthly travels had instructed her in the gratuitous and secular art of attention seeking; a novel way to suck the life from romance.

"It's so deliciously warm," she purred while running her creamy white hand from shoulder front to hip front, slowly over the mound of her ample breast. Her pale skin against the red of the velvet was almost enough for his manhood to be over.

He breathed, deeply, and was about to suggest a civilized game of croquet. His mere presence and his will to breath was her nemesis. He would pay now for his waste of her time.

In front of him, in the open, in public and beside the bubbling brook, she dropped her red velvet dress around her ankles. Beneath she was already undressed. Her even white skin was breath taking and his hand flew to his heart. Ever the gentleman, he diverted his eyes and turned slightly away.

Unconcerned about his second feeble attempt to protect his lustful growth, she stepped into the freezing mountain stream. The carp sang her praises and drank in the blessed water she now provided. The dragon fly rested on her head and arms. Tiny forest birds graced the space around her and allowed the ladybug and butterfly to honour her visit.

Her breasts firm and nipples peaked, her buttocks perfectly rounded and even, she was a goddess of the brook.

Her eyes met his. She held his gaze while she chanted her song of end. She was so beautiful...so, naked. Why would his eyes, his heart, ever leave her? He turned back to completely face her, his hugeness swollen and bulging.

His death was not quick and neither was he alone. Her sister witches, called by the song of end, rose from the water and embraced their returned naked water nymph. In front of his dying eyes their hands explored their sister and worshipped her body as thought they had never felt it before. Her song she continued, unbroken till the end.

His heart, not as manly as his groin, gave in. The sung magic, the song of end, stole his beats and his blood. As the blood drained from his chamber, she called for her gown. The forest birds obeyed her command and dropped her robe over the dying man.

His every drop of blood soaked into her frock. The red velvet glowed before subsiding to it's matte hue. As it toned down, her sister witches receded, their lust sated. The fish swam to cover and the creatures of the air disappeared to the trees.

She stepped out of the brook, redressed slowly and returned to her cottage, alone and no longer hungry for male company. Behind her back, a tiny green frog sniggered at the expired man and jumped back into the brook coven.



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

I hugged into the rough stone as though I was it.
I kissed it, smelt it, whispered it.
I placed my ear along its heart and listened to its tales.

I didn’t like what I heard. Gory, bloody, base.
But, I could not tear away.

I was imprisoned by their memory and enchanted by the ruin.

I remembered a book read, years before.
A tale of first convict sluts and demons.
A tale of torture, heart break, lust and respect.
A tale written by an author who lived on the Island. Still. Colleen McCullough.
What was she running to? Morgan’s run? For me it was Bloody Bridge.

I listened for her voice. I listened for his. His was beaten down by the stone.

Her call carried across the pines planted by irons and it dipped into the bluest lagoon of sorrow and death.

Her call confirmed that this was the spot where convicts, chained and balled, were necessitated to shale the rock for building their prisons. In collecting, many failed to collect. They became shark food, or just drowned, held down by the weight of their transgressions.

Some enhanced the bluest hue ever with their Irish blue eyes as they looked out from their cemetery of scene divinity. Unmatched it was with the red of whale and coat of aggressor. Some lay beneath the bridge because they joined the aggressor.

Every where, the depression and the whispering were over bearing. It was breaking my heart. It was in my blood. I was the bridge. Bloody Bridge.

But the view. The view. No matter where I walked in Norfolk, the view tore down my ancestry smocks of sorrow. The shades of oppression and death became torn from my eyes and my heart rose like the sun itself.

The views on Norfolk Island were the most beautiful I had ever seen. The stories, the calling, the worst.



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

The young English tourist read aloud from the Positions Vacant of a Far North Australian newspaper.

"Buddy, this is the job," he convincingly said to his lily white friend. He read the advertisement aloud, "Work on Curlew Island with chicks and guano. Day work only. Ten days on, four days off with flights back to Cairns. Island accommodation and rubber protection supplied. Locate chicks and work alongside in bagging guano."

Young London lad, on a work visa, in Australia fulfilling his cultural rite of passage, agreed with his Liverpudlian buddy. Anything that involved them working with girls on an Island paradise was their kind of job.

Buddy lay back on his bunk at the hostel and imagined what it would be like working with the Island natives: buxom, tanned, giggly and ever so pleased to have some fresh males to copulate with. The girls would be mesmerized with the English accent and the creamy white skin,undamaged and unblemished unlike the salted skin of the Aussie blokes these girls would have been used to.

Yep. These two lads would get the job with the chicks and guano because they were ready to embrace the Australian way of life and party, party, party on tropical Islands.

Buddy wondered aloud; "I don't know what the Guano gentleman must have done but I have no difficulty bagging him. I wonder if he was perhaps some local Island chap who did the totally wrong thing by the Islanders?"

Oh yeah....these boys had no idea the shit they were about to get into.


If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

The impending birth was upon us. Heavy with the fruits of her labour, the pushing had begun. She rolled over the mountain of fear and let go with a rolling growl that came deep from within her gut.

Her water broke and the life force spread down onto the ground. It smelt...fresh and new rather than the accepted brackish smell of birthing.

I looked heaven ward, to pray, and my wait of anticipation was washed away by what seemed a bucket of raw emotion being thrown on me. Dumped on me, from the heavens, like a baby being thrown from a passing Stork.

Shock, pain, confusion, joy. From somewhere, I heard the words, "It's a girl."

"It's mother nature. The drought is broken and may it rain solid for a month."

"Yes," I though. "May mother nature never stop giving birth to new life."



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.