30 Day Image Prompt Competition

Day 11 Prompt 1 - The Archer

         “That doesn’t look like a vase full of English roses,” Kirsten whispered.
         Laura looked down at the painting of the archer and gave a sheepish smile. “Roses are really not that inspiring today.” She glanced across at her friend’s canvas. “I don’t see any English roses on your picture.”
         Kirsten looked down at the castle that stood proudly on top of the lush, green hill. “They’re down by the gate. You can just see them, there.” She pointed to a minute pink haze at the base of the gate into the castle.
         “Miss Forbes will not be impressed.” Laura looked towards the front of the classroom where Miss Forbes, the formidable art teacher, stood patrolling the front of the group.
         “Hopefully she won’t want to see the canvases. Either that, or Emily Wilson will have created something that she has to enthuse over and we’ll all be forgotten, as usual.”
         “Can we be that lucky two classes in a row?” Kirsten asked, thinking back to their last class when they had nearly been caught drawing a medieval banquet rather than the picnic display Miss Forbes had set up.
         “Don’t know. I’m hoping, though.” Laura looked down at her drawing of the archer and carefully added some finer detail to the breastplate of his armour. She knew Miss Forbes would not be pleased with her and Kirsten’s artistic endeavours. Ladies who attended St Margaret’s Academy for Young Ladies did not draw images of castles and archers from a period so long ago.
         As predicted, Miss Forbes came across Emily’s delicate drawing of the vase of roses and started to enthuse to the watching group about the graceful use of the artist’s pencil, her choice of colours, the emotion and imagery. Both girls rolled their eyes and started to gather up their pencils. If Miss Forbes could keep talking until the bell went they would be home and dry.
         The strident peals of the great bell proved that once more they were lucky. Their canvases, with their medieval drawings gracing the white paper, were placed within their leather cases before the bell had stopped ringing.
         “I expect your drawings to be finished ready for Friday’s lesson!” Miss Forbes called out as the girls started to leave their easels, ready to escape into the sunshine.
         The quadrangle outside the art complex was bathed in warm sunshine as the girls filed across the lawn towards the main building. Two hundred girls, aged seventeen to twenty one, attended St Margaret’s with the sole aim of becoming young, elegant ladies who would be appealing to single, wealthy men of the upper classes in society. Kirsten and Laura did not consider themselves to be part of this mass suitable-wife-in-training programme. They did not wish to be some man’s trophy wife who just smiled and nodded at whatever her husband said. No, they had greater ambitions that would surely shock the principals of such an esteemed academy.
         “Laura, can I ask you something?” Kirsten asked as they headed towards the dormitory wing where their bedroom was.
         “Anything.”
         “We didn’t imagine it, did we?” Kirsten’s voice was hesitant, barely audible against the chatter of the other girls.
         Laura walked on for a few moments, her brow creased in thought as she considered Kirsten’s question. “No,” she said. “We didn’t imagine it. I don’t know how it happened but we were there, really there.”
         “Do you think we’ll go back?”
         “I hope so. There was the only place where I felt like I belonged. I was somebody, free to do what I wanted to do.” Laura pushed open the door of their bedroom and dumped her case onto the single bed. The drawing of the archer, captured on the verge of releasing his arrow, was retrieved from the case and studied with a fierce intensity by the young woman.
         “If only we knew how to go back there,” Kirsten sighed as she joined her friend with her own drawing.
         The two girls stood in silent contemplation of the archer and the castle without really seeing them. Their mind’s eye had already taken them back to the medieval kingdom that they had found themselves in one evening. A great castle, perched upon the top of a green hill had guarded the region. Her archers patrolled the parapets, ready to fire upon anyone who was a threat.
         It had been a magical place, a place of wonder and excitement, where danger lurked around every corner. How they had gotten there wasn’t important at the time only that they could stay in this world that suited them much better than their own.
         “We’ll go back,” Laura vowed. “I don’t know how but we will go back.” She smiled at her friend, sealing their promise with their secret handshake that they had started when they were small children.