Every week, Sue Vincent sets a #writephoto challenge, using one of her lovely evocative photographs as a prompt. To participate, you have until Wednesday each week to write your post, with a new prompt posted on Thursday. This week, Sue shared an image of the full moon – this is my response:

‘All night long make tropic love, the next day sit in hot sun and cool off.’

She smiled, leaning back in her sun lounger, sipping rum and coca-cola, just like the song crackling from the old radio. Putting her drink down she stretched, feeling a slight twinge across her hipbones, as though they were slightly bruised. She frowned, a flash of dream from the night before sliding through her mind.

A dream of slipping out of the house into a silvery night, the moon a pale lantern leading her up through the trees behind her house, to where the land was smooth and green, raised like a breast towards the sky. Ridges carved into the earth formed a pathway strewn with starlight, and she danced along it, the silk and cotton of her nightgown soft against her bare legs, her hair long down her back as she twirled, arms lifted to the skies.

When she reached the top she saw others there, faces she recognised from the village, their arms raised as though to catch the silver light, eyes wild with the dance. And others still that she didn’t know, with pointed fox faces and strange gleaming eyes, their lithe bodies twisting as they moved among the dancers. Under the midsummer moon they had danced, woven silver and shadows, coming together to lie on soft grass under whirling stars until she had felt herself lifted, golden, becoming part of something larger and wilder…

And then she had woken, alone in her bed, the moon a soft orb glimpsed through her open window, fading in the light of dawn. She had stared a while, before sleep claimed her once more, not waking until sun streamed bright through the glass, warming her from head to toe.

It was a strange dream, she mused, taking another sip of her drink. She ran a hand through her hair and something caught in her fingers. A blade of grass, green as summer leaves, smooth as silk, wild as a dance.

As a dream.