Prompt: The Dreaming Tree

I still remember when Boa carried me to the dreaming tree for my first cutting. He tended his own rooted cutting every morning and every evening, pouring a handful of water around the long white roots , barely visible in the thick black soil that filled his pack. He showed me how the water drained through the soil and clung to the roots. “Too little and it will shrivel up; too much and it will drown and rot. You must find your cutting’s balance, see Tippa?”

Boa had tended his cutting for many years, and it stood taller than him when his pack rested on the ground. When the tribe daywalked, he carried it on his back, and those closest to him enjoyed the tree’s shade. On those rare occasions that the tribe nightwalked, Boa wrapped his sleeping blanket around the tree’s furled leaves. “We must protect them in their sleep, Tippa, or there will be no dreams for us later.”

I was three when Boa said it was time for my first cutting. Mya said I was too young to climb the dreaming tree to find the tender new growth that made best cuttings, but Boa scoffed and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Run to that round-leaved tree, Tippa, and show your Mya how well you can climb.”

His fingers pointed to a round-leaved tree that shaded old Beeba’s tent. Beeba was one of our best dreamers; everyone showed her respect with gifts of food, water, and shade. I loved to curl up with Beeba and share her dreams. When she slept longer than me, I would lie next to her and watch the sunlight through the tree’s leaves, imagining what it would be like to have my own dreaming tree someday. As long as I could remember, Boa had told me that one day, I would have my very own cutting to tend, and I would guard the tribe’s next dreaming tree…

To be continued…

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Time writing	~20 minutes
July word count	9,285

Prompt: Misjudged by appearance, Part 2

…Continued from Part 1

Shelly ignored the watching foreman as she stroked this digger’s teeth and lip. When it started to rumble, she picked up the saddle reign and ran her hand down tot he bolts buried in the digger’s neck. She would no more ride a digger without checking the animal and gear than she would step onto a shuttle that hadn’t been properly inspected. Another test.

Finally, she popped a piece of dark rich chocolate into her mouth and tucked her foot into the stirrup, pushing herself up and swinging her other leg over the digger’s back and into the saddle.

The foreman squinted up at her. “What’s the chocolate for? Never saw that.”

Shelly grinned down at him. “I like chocolate.” She shrugged. He laughed aloud and stepped back to the fence.

Shelly didn’t ride with reins. If she had to use them, she had already lost. She rubbed her left leg back and forth against the digger’s side until she found the open rib bone. Tucking her ankle under it, she nudged with her foot. The digger snorted and turned to the right. Shelly found the right side rib and repeated her maneuver. It only took a handful of times for the digger to understand what she wanted, and she had him walking in a line near the fence, around the paddock. She headed for the open pit and turned the digger in to find a bare spot on the ground next to it.

Leaning forward, Shelly spread her fingers wide n either side of thedigger’s neck and slid them down in a swift cutting motion. She lifted her hands away and slapped them high up on the digger’s neck, sliding them down again. The digger lifted his head and roared. Shelly flattened against his back and held on to the saddle ropes.

The digger opened his mouth wide and plunged down, slmming into the dirt with a bone wrenching blow. His teeth sank through the hard, dry soil, and he pulled a biteful for the first time. He reared his head up again and roared in ecstasy, then plowed down again and again, dredging up huge mouthfuls of dirt with each blow to the ground.

Shelly kept a close watch on his progress, nudging him from side to side with her feet on his open ribs. Finally, she began to sweep her arms up, rather than down, until the digger stood silent and sweaty by the square pit he had dug.

The foreman clapped loud, slow handclaps as he approached them. “You’re your Daddy’s girl, all right. Impressive riding.  Clean him up and come back tomorrow. I’ll keep you busy.”

Before Shelly could thank him, he whirled on his boot heel and jogged toward another digger and rider. She watched for a moment and shook her head. The rider was an idiot. She had her work cut out for her.

TBC?

Music	Sting, “St Agnes and the Burning Train”
Time writing	~60 minutes
May word count	12,985

Prompt: Misjudged by appearance, Part 1

The foreman eyed Shelly up and down with a dubious frown. She kept her hand in her pockets and her mouth shut. She needed the work. He just needed a moment to adjust to the idea of a woman handling a digger. She was used to it.

“You’re Cyrus’s girl, huh? He was a good man. Best rider I ever knew. Shame what happened to him.”

Shelly ducked her head. She didn’t talk about her Daddy. Ever.

“Are you sure you know how to handle this thing?”

Shelly didn’t feel the need to answer that directly. She just gave the foreman a level look and turned to the digger shuffling behind him. It was a full-grown male, twice as large as one of the old elephants. Shelly untucked her hands and held them wide by her face, slowly waving them to get the digger’s attention. He shifted his head and whuffed in her direction, blowing dust over her worn black boots.

She started a rumble deep in her chest, and the foreman grinned, stepping back to let her approach the digger. Testing her. She ignored him, focused on the big male. Still waving her hands to make her face look larger, and direct his attention to her eyes, she slowly stepped forward, stopping a few feet in front of the beast. His ears twitched in greeting, and he lowered his head, his mouthful of jagged teeth swinging close to her.

Suddenly Shelley was two years old again, her Daddy holding her tight as she buried her face in his neck. The digger musk combined with his own skin and soap until she couldn’t tell them apart. Daddy and Digger smelled the same to her.

“Diggers teach us not to judge by appearance,” Daddy said, his deep voice rumbling beneath her. “People are terrified of them, but they are the most gentle souls I’ve ever known.” He started his rumble, sort of like a cat purr, and Shelly felt him lift his free hand to pet the digger facing them. She felt its hot breath on her skin, in her mouth.

Turning her head to the side, Shelly squinted her eyes open to see the giant digger. She reached out her little hand next to Daddy’s and ran her fingers over the jagged teeth crowding out of the digger’s mouth. “He’s rumbling, Daddy!”

“He likes you.”

“I like him too.” Shelly sat up in Daddy’s arm, turning so she could reach her hand up under the digger’s lip like Daddy was doing. The digger rumbled, and Daddy rumbled, and Shelly tried to rumble, too.

By the time she was four, she could rumble deeper and louder than most riders. She rode in front of Daddy on the broad saddle, and he taught her everything he knew about riding diggers. By the time she was six, Daddy would have let her ride alone if their foreman would have let her. By the time she was eight, Daddy was gone. They said it was a digger, but Shelly never believed it.

Continued in Part 2…

Music	Sting, “St Agnes and the Burning Train”
Time writing	~60 minutes
May word count	12,985

Prompt: someone cleans out their closet only to find something extremely unusual

“Davey, go pull everything out of the closet in your room. I want to wash the walls down before we put your stuff in there.”

Davey groaned. “But Mom!” She just gave him That Look and pointed upstairs. Davey stomped toward the stairs. When he hit the first step, his mother said, “Thanks, Davey. I really appreciate your help. Get the closet cleared out, and you can take a break and go look around the block for other kids, okay?” Davey refused to look at her, but he nodded and then continued upstairs.

He didn’t remember the house, but Cassie said they had come to visit their grandparents when Davey was two, before Daddy went to Afghanistan. She remembered a Christmas tree in the living room, and the pass-through window from the kitchen to the dining room. That was eight years ago. Daddy was gone, and now his parents, too. He didn’t understand why they had to come live in this stupid big old house.

There were four bedrooms on the second floor. Davey and Cassie were in the back two. She shared a bathroom with Mom, which meant Davey got the second bathroom all to himself. That was pretty cool, he guessed. He had a big walk-in closet, too. But it was filled with his grandparents’ junk, like the rest of the house. They were trying to go through everything. Mom called it organizing. It felt more like moving stuff from one room to another. But Davey knew better than to argue when she was slinging That Look.

They’d already gone through all the clothes, so Davey turned on the closet light and started pulling things off the shelves that lined the wall opposite the door. None of it was very interesting to him, as he carried armload after armload out into his room and spread it on the floor. When he got to the top two shelves, he pulled in his desk chair to climb up.

Reaching up to the top shelf, his hand knocked against something hard that scooted away – he followed it and clasped his fingers around a small box. Tugging it off the shelf, he carried it down and sat on his bed to open it. An old style cigar box, with pictures criss-crossed in a collage. Davey lifted the lid and peered inside. A handful of baseball cards, a few letters, a fishing lure, and a man’s ring with a tiger eye stone. Davey slid the ring on his finger and picked up the cards.

Cassie burst through his bedroom door. “Davey—”

She looked around in confusion. “Davey? Oh, Mom is going to kill you for sneaking out, you brat!” She backed out of the room and disappeared down the hall.

Davey pulled off the ring and stared at it. “Wow. What was that?”

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music	Santana on youtube.com
Time writing	40 minutes, distracted
May word count	1,047

Prompt: Dowsing rod

Jenna was seven when her father hit her for the last time. She dropped her bowl full of hot chili on the new reeds he had just laid over the dirt floor. Her tears welled and ran down her face even before he jumped out of his chair. She ran out the door, and he caught her next to the old hickory tree. The bark was scratchy, so she’d never climbed it, but she would have taken a thousand scratches to evade his anger.

He grabbed a small branch and ripped it free, whipping it down against her bare legs. Without thinking, Jenna snatched the branch from his hand, and it twisted in her fingers, pulling her off balance. She staggered to the side, the hickory switch turning slowly in her hand to point toward the ground.

Her father froze, his hand up high to strike her again. He stared at the switch. “You doing that, girl?” He asked sharply. Jenna flinched and shook her head.

“You sure?”

She nodded. The switch tugged down, pulling out of her hands and tumbling into the drought-dried dust. Her father raised his eyebrows, then turned on his heel without another word and stomped to the tool shed. He returned with a shovel and pickax.

“Better not be foolin me, girl, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“No sir. No foolin,” Jenna whispered.

He raised the pickax high and let it fall straight into the dirt. It sank almost to the handle, and he gave it a hard tug. And another. As he reached down for a stronger grip, he froze again. Jenna forgot her fear for a moment and leaned closer with him. A dark stain spread around the buried metal spike.

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music	Sting, “Burn for You”
Time writing	15 minutes
March word count	5,220

Prompt: You have to go deep enough to see clearly

"Katya! Come out of the water!” Mama called until I pushed my head through the brown algae sludge. “Get out of there, Katya! You know it’s not good for you!”

I ducked back under and kicked down a few feet to reach clear water so I could swim to the shore. Mama didn’t understand. When I climbed out through the sludge, she hustled me over to the pipe shower and hosed me down, fussing all the while. I kept quiet and clutched the spiral shell I had found to show Papa.

“Look how this one winds to the left,” Papa said as I cuddled in his lap after dinner and showed him the shell. He traced its ridges from top to bottom, turning it slowly in his trembling hands. I leaned my head on his chest and listened to his tap-tappy heart and the whistle when he breathed – shallow breaths in and out, the nurse kept reminding him. My fingers followed his around the spiral of the shell.

Papa was a pearl diver before the sludge took over. It got in his lungs and now he can’t breathe on land or in the water. He taught me to swim before I could walk, and he taught me to dive deep under the sludge before he couldn’t get in the water any more.

“See, Katya. The sludge is on the surface. It wraps around everything – trash, pollution, slow children…” He would tickle me, and I would giggle and wrap my arms around his neck while he treaded in the water. “Once it covers anything, it pulls it under, sinking to the bottom of the ocean, where it turns to rock and holds the trash down there forever. So the sludge is on the top and on the bottom, but in between, the water is clean and clear. And all ours.” And we would hold hands and dive deep into the clear water, light filtering through the sludge high above us.

The sludge covered the oysters, of course, so there were no more pearls. Everything that lived on the bottom – coral, shrimp, anemone, crabs – they all were covered by the sludge and turned to rock. Everything that lived on the surface – dolphins, whales, turtles, resting birds – was pulled under and sank to the bottom to be covered as well. The middle oceans thrived. That was where I lived…

Dogs in house	Houdini
Time writing	20 minutes
February word count	5,190

Prompt: Dinner with family, former child star, person with arthritis, neighborhood is changing

Sarah rolled back from the door with an economy of motion designed to hide the pain. Jason studied her closely as he stepped over the threshold and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Flirt,” she whispered, her fingers brushing his chin.

He stood and closed the door behind him, giving her space to move down the hall into the family room. Following her, Jason breathed deep, the smells of home and family filling his awareness as he walked down the hall and paused momentarily unnoticed in the doorway.

Bill was handing Sarah a wine glass, their fingers brushing across each other’s as she reached up for it. God, they’d been in love since they were fifteen. Hard to believe it had been twenty years already. Sarah looked the same, and Jason guessed she always would. Bill had some gray in the hair he wore much shorter now. And glasses. Huh. Jason filed that away to tease old Eagle Eyes about later. Not that they’d be sharing a room or anything like they used to.

Dad was helping Mom in the kitchen, which meant she was ready for some rescue. Jason smiled to see them together. Why couldn’t it always be like this, he wondered briefly. He faltered and wanted to turn around and leave. He couldn’t get through the night without Alex. How could any of them?

Before he could blink the sudden haze from his eyes, Dad saw him and roared an overly jovial welcome. He came across the room, arms outstretched. Jason tried not to stiffen as those hands reached around to hug him. He couldn’t quite make himself return the hug, but he didn’t pull away before Dad did, and he put his hand on Dad’s shoulder, gave him a smile. “Hi, Dad.”

That was all, before Mom swept between them, clinging tightly to him. This was an embrace he could relax into, return freely. She drew back and clapped both hands on his cheeks. “You’re so thin! Come with me. Don’t they feed you out in Hollywood?”

It broke the ice, as she had intended, and everyone laughed. Jason followed her out into the kitchen and tied on an apron, slipping easily into his old role of Mother’s Helper. He could watch everyone from the island while he chopped vegetables and slapped butter on the garlic bread before he tucked it into the oven.

“Sarah looks well,” he said quietly to Mom. She ran her hand across his shoulder as she passed him on the way to the fridge, making a noise that could have been agreement. Or avoidance. It gave him pause. “Is she?”

Mom closed the fridge and gave him a level look. “Sarah’s fine, dear.”

His relief was fleeting. She was still giving him that look. Waiting for him. “Who? Dad? Not Bill?”

Mom shook her head, and a heaviness pressed against his heart, a aband of ice threatening to crush it. He reached for her hand. “Mom? What’s wrong?”

He vaguely noticed that all the sound behind them ha stopped. Everyone was watching them.

Dogs in house	Houdini
Music	Alex Clare, “Too late”
Time writing	~20 minutes
February word count	3,479