8:47 To Great Yarmouth

Written for Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge.
I chose Pic #3. Here’s where the image took me.

The marsh cattle didn’t even lift their heads when the 8:47 rattled past. They had long ago made their peace with it …. that brief, metallic interruption of an otherwise eternal silence.

Between Acle and Great Yarmouth, the land had never quite decided whether it belonged to water or earth. It simply lay there, flat and patient, breathing out a faint saltiness that mixed with the smell of wet grass and dung and distance.

The rails ran straight as a surveyor’s vision. On either side, the grazing stretched away into a wide, far off horizon. A heron stood motionless in the reed, indifferent to everything.

The train came, shook the air for thirty seconds, and was gone. The cattle chewed. The heron didn’t move. The grass resumed its quiet conversation with the wind.

NAR©2026

This is “Lonely Locomotives” by Dierks Bentley

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #082

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