The Orb by Gordon O'Sullivan
Birdsong by Gill Baldwin
A Memory by Mary Brennan
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 Writers' Gallery
This is one response from a talented writer to a writing exercise. Each participant picks a random object from a bag and chooses a random location from a set of photos. Both are selected without looking. The idea is to write a very short story of three or four paragraphs.
- Describe the object
- describe the location
- Bring the two together
- See what happens
Random Item: A hand-blown glass spherical paperweight
Random Location: A forest
The Cuckoo
The small orb glinted in the sun. Light shone through it, illuminating it. The orb's interior gleamed with a verdant hue, green with a faint blue seam. Strange alien shapes, like silver golf clubs peeped out of its moss-like base, striving upwards, perhaps towards their origin. It was not of this place.
A palisade of twigs surrounded the small object, entwining it, clutching it in its grasp. The orb weighed the nest down, anchoring it on the muddy path. The nest was tilted slightly on its side as if the basket of a hot air balloon had overturned on descent. Beside the green orb lay bodies, tiny outstretched avian bodies, three in total. Their bodies lay inside the nest while their heads lolled backwards onto the brown earth, looking up at the marine of the sky overhead.
A few moments before perhaps their mouths were open, ready to receive their daily bill of fare from their flapping mother. Did they imagine what was to come? Could they understand what was happening as the impact hit their wooden world. Did they cry as they flew for the first time, descending towards the earth? Did their bones crush, expelling a last breath from their tiny bodies as they hit the ground with a snap and a thud?
Did they see the cuckoo in their nest?
By Gordon O Sullivan
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