For this summer’s printed festival editions, The Prophet announced its second literary call for participation, to involve more of you in co-creating the content of our tribe’s newspaper, to spread some literary arts, and to encourage the writers in you to discover or show your hidden talents. After poetry, came FLASH FICTION. 

One of the shortest, and most famous, works of ‘flash fiction’ include Ernest Hemingway’s 6-word story:
“For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn”. 

One of the most recent pieces of flash fiction that The Prophet got its hands on to share with you, on the other hand, is the brainchild of Marton Naray, who has not only written in the past for the newspaper (Love over hate, humanity over greed, understanding over fear / The roots are us) but also counts as a longtime Ozorian family member and Dragon stage manager, presently based in Prague and director of Sound Czech/Czech Music Office and conference director of Nouvelle Prague.

TURNING POINT

By Marton Naray

Kids were playing outside with an unku, an animal that died out a long time ago, but had recently been revived like the other 400 species in the last hundred years.
Maya suddenly shouted, “Come here quickly!!! I found something…”
“What is it, my lovely daughter?” I asked.
A weird metal object was beneath her feet. I’d never seen anything like it.
We brought it home, watched it for a while. Then as we were examining it, we noticed that it could be opened…
It was a time capsule, with strange things inside… Plastic bottle, trash, pictures of concrete cities without any plants and many aggressive and sad-looking, burnt-out faces…
“What happened then?” she asked.
“My sweetheart, it’s from before the turning point.” I answered.
“Turning point???”
“Yes! A bit more than a hundred years ago… We humans nearly died out like the many species we helped eliminate…”
“Why?”
“Ignorance, stupidity, small provincial ego… I don’t know exactly, but what is sure, that many aspects painted a black future…”
“And what happened?”
“Something… Hmm, I don’t know, unconsciously or partly on purpose, against the odds… Hope got revived… People started to believe that they could do better… and step by step they relearned a new reality… We are still learning and building it… Some kind of general awareness appeared… and the first thinkers started to plant the seeds of plants, trees, and knowledge. They finally got the message that hadn’t been clear for thousands of years… That the only way out is together… And once those sad, aggressive burnt-out people took the first steps, it made them feel good… Somehow the ego cannot deal with such a thing… It was a crossing in a way… Humans understood how to feel much better together… They even stopped owning many things, and started helping others and creating a future that was hopeful, and working on this common vision made everyone much happier than the rich people, who at the time were already living on closed islands…”
“Rich people?”
“Oh yes, sorry… There was a part of society that put themselves above others, they owned factories, companies and weren’t motivated to give back to the other people… But as the first awakened ones showed up, they changed as well…”
“That was the turning point?”
“Yes! Actually, !Hope! is the turning point!”