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The Last Prayer

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for Esther’s Writing Prompts
using the prompt word ‘block’.

Image by Me & ChatGPT

The Tower held its breath before dawn, mist curling low across the green, like something shameful to witness was coming. Anne walked the short distance with her ladies, her steps measured, her spine straight as the sword that waited for her …. not the axe, a small mercy Henry had granted, as though mercy could still mean anything now.

The block was low, almost humble, which did nothing to soften what it was. Anne had expected fear to consume her, but instead felt strangely light, as if she were already halfway departed from her own body.

She spoke briefly to the small crowd …. careful words, chosen for those she left behind, for a daughter who would grow up motherless and misunderstood. Then she knelt, and someone tied a blindfold over her eyes, and the world narrowed to breath and cold air and the distant call of a bird that did not know or care what it was witnessing.

She prayed, her supplication muffled in her mouth as the blade found its mark.

Below the scaffold, the crowd began to fall away, already forgetting its queen.

NAR©2025

This is “Anne Boleyn: Heavy Metal Will Never Die” by Serpent of Decay

Writing Prompts

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

27 thoughts on “The Last Prayer”

      1. You find so many that I’ve never heard of, this one being a case in point. I tentatively hit the ‘play’ button, wondering what I was in for, but it was superb. And they told the story well.

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