Another Time, Another Place

This week, I joined the writers club.  We meet at the coffee shop right outside my apartment complex.  What is writers club?  Well, one of us looks for a writing prompt throughout the week and presents it to others.  We sit, ...thinking and writing for about 45 minutes, and then we share what we wrote.  I LOVE THIS!  Creative writing is one of my favorite things to do, but who does that if you are just sitting at home?!
Here was the writing prompt this week: The picture below with a caption, "Another Time, Another Place," and you had to fit in a line in your story, "If there were an answer, he'd find it there."

Here is what I came up with.  It's more of a "book jacket" summary rather than the whole story.  The boy I refer to is the boy on the far right, a little removed from the others.  :)  ENJOY.

The sky holds ominous clouds full with rain taunting the sea below.  The wind strengthens with each moment, catching the tattered sail. The noise of the railroad tracks, ocean waves, and wind together is almost too much to bear. The makeshift cart on the tracks follows an unknown path through the darkest adventure a boy could imagine.

The boy has escaped a lifetime of pain, in search of a reason, an answer, a hope. His tears never seemed to fall too far from others like him, so the adventure grew each time another boy escaped a life of pain.

A flash of lightning catches the boy’s mind back to the adventure before him. Although the storm grew quickly, the squealing of the cart’s front wheel is the only thing that carries to his ears. “You can make it,” he whispers into the wind. “I have to make it.” 

He stares into the distance, the end in sight. Images flood his memory and he shakes his head to wish them away.  With each wave that passes by, so also his fears pass, and another hope is gained. The peaks of the castle reach just beyond the horizon, screaming out a chance to be free—the last chance to be free. 

As the clouds finally released the water it held, the others who have joined him for the journey stare in a solemn silence.  The boy stands proud, knowing that he rescued others like him.  Those peaks are as much a mystery to him as the wind and the waves, but something inside pushes him to hope for more.  He doesn’t know what kind of answer he’s looking for, but if there were an answer, he’d find it there.