Golden Rivers – #WritePhoto

“It’s ludicrous.”

“It’s genius!” Tarr bellowed, triumphantly holding the wooden keg above his head as he waded in the shallow river waters, just shy of where the waterfall’s edge thundered. “Just think ‘bout it. We pour it  ‘ere, the waterfall mixes ‘er all up. Then, next time yeh go down to the river to fill yer waterskin, instead of water it’s-”

“Tarr, by all ideas of yours, this is possibly the most far fetched! It will all just wash away!” Harrison cried from the shoreline. He watched as the burly man grumbled to himself, wrestling with the cork wedged firmly in the barrel’s end. “And how much did you spend getting- how many barrels, Tarr? Thirty, was it? Forty?” Harrison motioned a hand to the piles upon piles of barrels stacked at the river’s edge, filled and ready to pour.

“Yeah, well y’know, gotta spend money to make money…” Tarr mumbled, trailing away as he worked doggedly at the keg’s cork. Harrison shook his head. The man was hopeless. Tarr considered himself an inventor, a visionary of their time, and somehow with each new crazed venture, Harrison found himself accompanying the disillusioned fool.

“Couldn’t we just, you know, drink the kegs ourselves?” Harrison suggested.

With a satisfying pop, the cork came away from the keg, and Tarr began to pour its contents into the river stream with a manic chuckle.

Harrison could almost see the coins trickling away as the ale spilled into the waters, its pale tendrils spreading and vanishing into the depths before it tumbled over into the roaring mixer of the waterfall. All the while, he could just make out Tarr muttering something about ‘rivers filled with golden ale’.

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Thought I would try my hand at something a little different, using the image prompt ‘Torrent’ from Sue Vincent’s #WritePhoto! Tossed around ideas, but couldn’t get the thought of a madman pouring something into the water out of my head…