The Tolpuddle Martyrs

Katsbeach

Event: 500 Word Challenge

Location: Milk Wood, Second Life 

Host: Lizzie Gudkov

Prompt: Tolpuddle, 1834: revolt, condemned, swiftly, martyr

Time: 30 mins

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It was time for revolt, it was time for anger.

Work, work and struggle for nothing more than work.

Be lost, be penniless, be a slave.

Be. No food. 

Be. No home.

Be, the emptiness of any tomorrow ahead.

Be. No more.

And they fought back. They believed. They could. They did.

Others didn’t. They condemned ideas, they condemned actions, they condemned everyone swiftly.

And a martyr became nothing more than a name on a yellow, brittle piece of paper, a faint recollection of an immemorial past.

They tried to run, to hide, but they couldn’t. They didn’t.

Lives irreparably uprooted into faraway lands filled with unknown nothingness, filled with the certainty of an impossible return.

They struggled. They fought. They lost.

Back then, they lost. Yes…

Today, they are recalled. They are here.

Their ideas, their actions, their tomorrows became our today, their message still alive and meaningful, almost unbelievably meaningful, in a world of no tomorrows, pessimists say.

But now they live on. They live.

Now, they do.