When the news was announced, crowds soon gathered all over town. The largest of these was in a park next to the village hall.
The water in the park’s fountain, still gurgling, thanks to the taxes that were still being collected and the appearances that were still being kept up, suddenly turned an astonishing golden hue. Children asked their mothers if they could touch the shimmery water. Mothers took their children by the hands and approached the fountain. At first, the people were submissively cautious – touching any waterways, man-made or natural, had been prohibited long ago by some unremembered health department commissioner. But the allure of the golden liquid overrode any qualms the people had about plunging a body part into nature’s elixir, and soon they were all joyously in the fountain, drinking, splashing and laughing, good as gold.
Among the flowers and statues, a lone voice began quietly singing:
Let’s fight like hell for the living
Let’s fight like hell for the living
They all took up the song until it echoed from the rooftops all over town. The song swept into neighboring towns until The Song could be heard in the halls of power, where the rulers quaked in fear.
The people had remembered that they were free beings.
This is the way it happens.
This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite challenge. Today's prompt is not a release.
I did not set a timer for this one, and I tinkered with it a lot. It was hard come by, truth be told. But it is a freewrite, a story I had no idea I was going to tell today until I sat down to tell it.
