Every perfect swing has its price.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara stood on the championship golf course, waiting for the tee-off. Whispers drifted from the stands–everyone wanted to see if she would return.
A title that was hers–unless fate planned otherwise.
The murmurs of the crowd were far away–as if the world had converged on that grass patch.
She felt the familiar hunger of ambition, in answer to the crowd.
Too loud, too urgent.
Then a glint that drew her gaze.
Waiting
Patient.
Demanding.
From the 7th tee.
The others were too caught up in the game to notice.
The smell of cut grass strengthened and swallowed.
Around her, leaves blew, rustling–
Without wind.
But a warning.
Lara reached downward, her fingers wrapping around the glinting tee.
The shot was too perfect.
Straight and equidistant.
Of course, cameras did equally perfect zooms. The commentators hailed the miracle
Then the green grass around it wilted, and the sand split.
Fissures appeared on a nearby mound.
A lone red robin appeared on it–
Dead.
Her caddy hollered a warning; not that the officials heard.
But she was too close to the title to stop her swing.
A crack.
Under her feet.
Lara kept swinging and winning.
Each swing carved into the mound, making cracks.
Deeper and deeper.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara took her final swing.
The ground responded, trembling more than the St. Andreas Fault.
The fissures were invisible–at least to the clamouring spectators.
Roaring the win.
They raced towards her, unknown to them.
But Lara knew–
Her perfect putt had carved too deep.
The trophy was within sight–
On cracking ground.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
The spectators cheered in a roaring wave, moving forward, oblivious to the danger.
The ground beneath Lara crumbled into a gaping hole.
Wider.
And wider.
Applause rose, blind to the widening chasm.
She grasped the trophy–
The Earth gave way faster than a sonic boom.
She had to decide–to hold with both hands and fall–
Pride’s prey.
Or release—
And breathe. At last.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara’s fingers were in iron cuffs; the fissure threatened to swallow.
The roar of the crowd deafened, a drum that lured.
The gaps between Lara’s fingers turned chasms themselves.
into an open palm.
Sweaty, but breathing.
She released.
With a breath that finally soothed her overwrought limbs.
Salved her heart—and spirit.
The spectators gaped, mid-stare.
The silence washed over the greens, a gripping shroud.
Then, they scattered their disappointment felt—but forgone.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
The hole swallowed the crowd, its cheers curdling, then dying off.
The crowd’s roar had dulled into silence.
A leaf rustled, accompanying the lone golfer.
It was a magnificent scar on the course—one some reporters hailed a legend.
Others, a tragedy of Tsunami magnitude.
The iron cuffs—off her hands.
Lara’s trophy had lodged itself within the wide crack, gleaming to applause—
That would remain heard—
Only by Lara.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
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