The beauty of Chew Magna Lake in Somerset is enhanced by the clouds in the sky above and reflected rather gloriously on the reservoir’s lightly rippled surface.

It’s common to see curious shapes such as cats, elephants and dragons in clouds. Imagine if that was taken a step further, and the reflections showed something more or other than what’s seen above.

Can you turn this into a diptych of a tale that tells both what there is and what could be or has been? What could this perceived view reveal about the characters who see it?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

On a sunny day strolling around Bristol Harbour, I spotted a school of vast fish shoaling and feasting on some water foliage. The gull bobbing on the surface seems to have no concerns about what could brush against their feet at any moment, or even try a nibble.

It made me think about how little we’re aware of what happens beneath our feet, or of the threats that lurk, occasionally in plain sight. Often we underestimate the things that could cause harm. Imagine if one fish in the photo above were to choose to sample ‘gull surprise’, and the carnage that could trigger! Would the gull flap into action and flee to safety? What if they realised too slowly what was happening and found themselves unable to escape?

Can you turn this idea into a tale with a feisty, defiant protagonist at its heart?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

I often feel anxious when I see trees emblazoned with coloured splotches in a local woodland. It generally indicates a tree set to be felled or trimmed.

Some helpful person has decided to make this ash tree’s foreboding embellishment a little cheerier, however, by adding eyes and a vibrant head of hot-pink hair.

Will it be enough to save the tree from execution? Will the tree surgeons smile and take their chainsaw elsewhere?

Or is this comical character an unlikely guardian (I’m thinking along the lines of Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life), protecting the ash tree from harm?

What direction could you take this story in?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

I have a fondness for that curious view of the underside of bridges you can only see from water. This one is a particular beauty – the serpentine 91-metre Castle Bridge that wends its way from Castle Park to Finzels Reach in Bristol.

From this angle it could almost be the scaled belly of an immense reptile. Alternatively, it could be a futuristic home for a miniature civilisation living beneath the feet but above the ferries of the humans who visit and inhabit this city.

Can you turn one of these ideas into a story or dream up one of your own?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Remember how during lockdown the skies were eerily still without human traffic? Only birds, insects and weather inhabited those spaces.

When the first contrails (the vapour trails aeroplanes leave in clear skies) appeared, most people felt hope. Normal life was resuming.

But glancing up now, I see a traffic jam of countless people zipping off for holidays and work. We’ve gone back to all the bad habits we paused in the early months of the pandemic.

Can you turn this sobering thought into a story? Can you tell it through the eyes of someone who might want, or even know how, to make a change?

If you write or create something inspired by water, please send an email to judydarley (at) icloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I might publish it on SkyLightRain.com.