Thorgun Wicketwood looked down the path towards the huge stone edifice. The damn things were everywhere. Why? He had no idea, but they were the bane of his life. The farmers hated them as they couldn’t shift them, so had to sow around them and so harvest the same way. The druids had long held the belief they were portals to another existence, ‘as if‘ he thought so often.

But he and his friend ‘Pickets’ Borderline had found a useful purpose for them.

They invented a game where one would stand in front of the stone and defend the stone from the onslaught of small leather balls with a protective stick made from the willow growing behind ‘Pickets’ place.

The game attracted a lot of locals, and soon teams evolved and games played on the afternoon of rest.

Thorgun was a worker of leather and purchased his leather from LeatherFred’s Leather and Tanning Emporium. He found there were always bits left over and fashioned them into ball shapes after stuffing them with pebbles. As he was renowned as an excellent stitcher of leather, he made the balls using his well-known six stitchers.

So, the games were played, at one stage someone suggested the protective sticks be called bats, but Thorgun dismissed the idea as the sticks looked nothing like a bat.

At the end of an afternoon of game, the players would meet to discuss the afternoon’s play and make suggestions for future events. One suggestion they liked but knew it would take some effort, and that was to play on a level field, as it was they played wherever there was a stone and made do with the environment.

Looking down the valley in front of them they decided to approach the Lord family who owned a large expanse of flat land surrounded by a number of suitable stones.

Written for: https://scvincent.com/2018/07/26/thursday-photo-prompt-stone-writephoto/