This Prompt comes from 642 Tiny Things to Write About. Finish this sentence: The smell of an orange reminds me of….
The smell of an orange reminds me of the southern shores of Erros where the groves sit close enough to the ocean that you can smell the saltwater. I haven’t been since I was a boy of nine. In those years I hardly wore clothes at all, so quick was I too dirty them either in the muck lining the groves or the waters down the hill to the south. My father picked oranges his entire life. When they were not in season he worked at plucking cabbage until his fingers were stiff with the repeated actions. He told me, “Boy, you should never do as I do. You should learn the ways of books since we were both spared the gifts of magic.”
I didn’t see magic as much of a gift then. I only knew of the priests that roamed the lands conjuring healing spells for the faithful. The other children would talk of magisters who came from the west–from the place we came to know as the Reach. They were dirty men with poor morals and hearts that thought only of gold. It was a curse to be touched by magic and not touched by the one true God. If I had only known then how wrong the stories were–how much they witheld–my life would have been different. My life would have been safe.