Anne (Part Two of Three)

Anne heard voices, shouting, screaming.  Sirens were wailing.  The darkness was lifted, and she was pulled to her feet and onto a stretcher.  She saw other stretchers bearing people who had been close to the bomb.  She saw one man pull her kitten from the rubble of her house, and tried to reach out for her. The person pulling her stretcher toward the ambulance put her hand down.  She was put into the back of the truck and the doors closed.  They started moving, and Anne started to drift into sleep.  Someone shook her to keep her awake.  When he ambulance stopped, the doors opened and Anne was brought into the America military base hospital, where a nurse took her temperature, her blood pressure, and looked her over to see what damage was done.  Then she bandaged the cuts from window glass, and said there was nothing broken, just some bruising.  Anne felt like there was more than just some bruising.  She was led into another room by the nurse, and there were her parents.

Anne (Part One of Three)

Anne skipped down the stairs, her kitten following her.  She sang a happy little tune as she went into the kitchen, and she opened the refrigerator.  Anne reached in for the pitcher of juice, and just as she was taking the glass pitcher out of the refrigerator, a great shaking rumbled through the little house, and Anne dropped the pitcher.  The glass broke on the tile floor.  She scooped up her little kitten and ran down to the cellar, her face laced with fear.  The booming kept coming closer, and closer, and closer.  Anne was alone.  Her parents were out to visit a friend in the hospital, a victim of the Germans.  The whole house was shaking with each impact, now.  Anne held her breath.  And then--

BOOM!

Bricks rained down from the ceiling onto Anne, and everything went black.

The Lioness Breeze

This is a story I wrote last year.  I hope it's loved.  Comments will be loved, as will the commenters!


Lioness crept away from the sleeping pride to do the morning hunt shift.  As she silently stalked an early gazelle, she heard a soft summons on the wind, calling her.  She forgot the gazelle and followed the voice, not sure where it would lead her.  As she followed, the voice whispered, "remember, remember, remember" at certain shrubs and grasses.  While Lioness followed the whispers, a breeze blew around her head, and she saw all of the plants preceding a vision of curing a sick lion with it.  The breeze continued and grew stronger at every "remember" and when it left her she was back at the sleeping pride.  The breeze blew again, carrying a slain gazelle with it, placing it at her paws.  When the pride started to wake up, she saw in it some of the symptoms from the visions and, before anyone saw, she bounded back to the various plants, took some, and lugged it back, placing it with the sick lions' food.  After a few days of the same treatment, the lions became healthy again, and the breezes blew around her, congratulating her, beckoning her for more visions and lessons. 

Lioness woke up the next day, the breezes whispering in her ears, speaking to her, beckoning her, urging her up.  Lioness followed the breezes to a sneezing cub.  "Look at his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth," the breezes said, and Lioness did as she was told by the voices.  She inspected his eyes: they were glazed over.  She touched a tentative nose to his ears: they were hot, hotter than the sun could make them.  She listened to his nose: his breath was irregular.  She sniffed at his mouth: his breath smelled, like rotting meat left in the sun.  The breezes whispered, explaining.  "He is weak.  He will not live.  He will not wake up from his next sleep.  His death will be painful.  You must ease him out of this world and into the next.  Give him numbing berries.  Give him the berries.  They will help his pain.  Give him the berries. The berries.  The berries," it whispered.  Lioness dashed off, the early morning dew not yet washed away by the sun.  It clung to her paws as they drummed on the earth as she ran.  The breezes whispered through the long grass, guiding her to the berries.  Taking a pawful and gently holding them in her mouth, she dashed back to the cub, back paws beating the dust down as it was kicked up by her dewy front paws.  Reaching the cub, she gently urged the cub to eat them and take a nap, letting the cub die and watching him shudder as death passed through his small body.

Lioness did not think she could watch any more lions die at her paws because she was helpless.  She fought sickness hard as the pride was overcome by a wild fire illness from eating sickly prey.  She only gave up when she had to, and saved as many lives as she could.  The breezes were always with her, a part of her daily life now.  

Years passed, and as Lioness became old and brittle, she took a young she-cub to learn about the breezes.  Lioness was by this time able to converse with the voices and directed them to whisper to the young cub.  Lioness, confident that the breezes would teach the young cub all she needed to know, passed into the next world as her breathing became shallow and her heartbeat slowed.  As she died, she saw a vision of a new Healer Lioness, caring for her pride as a mother for her cubs.  With this reassurance, Lioness took her last breath, her heart stopped, and she left this world and passed into the next.

FIN