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On the prairie, you can see a storm coming from a long way off. It rolls across the sky, filling the empty spaces. Like blood from a serious wound seeping into a gauze bandage. Like spilled ink soaking the porous page.
I am afraid of storms the way some people are afraid of blood. Or ink.
I stood in my second storey window and watched this one roll in. Just a lighter streak on the evening horizon, at first. Then the greyness spread, gained force, and rumbled closer, gobbling up the stars as it came. The night lightened with the oncoming storm.
The temperature dropped quickly and I shivered.
I won't let this one scare me, I told myself. I can take it.
Thunder grumbled and I clutched at the yellowed wood of the sill.
The rain started and my heart began to pound. I could feel the blood throbbing in my arms as my fingers dug into the soft wood of the window frame.
Lightning cracked and I retreated to the corner.
A cold wind blew the curtains in the room and the rain came down harder. Harder. Pouring in the open window now, making the wood floor slick.
I winced and crawled over to window, reaching up to close it. But my hand trembled and I flinched away as the lightning struck again, nearby. I huddled for a moment under the window, the rain soaking me, until I finally grabbed the frame and slammed it shut.
Panting, I scrabbled back to my corner.
"Stop it, stop it," I muttered and wrapped my arms over my head. I tried to block out the noise of the thunder. I hunched there, rocking back and forth on my heels. My mouth was a wavy line. My eyes, slits.
In the extremity of my fear I could see my invisible wings draped around me. Translucent rainbow feathers curved round my knees, my face, my tensed arms and neck.
I used to have many sets of wings and countless feathers. Some were downy soft white, some black. Some were gold, some silver. I had ruby feathers, diamond feathers, and emerald feathers. Feathers of wood, feathers of stone. Feathers of blood, feathers of bone. Some were made of mist, some of lead.
But when I fell from grace I lost them all. Except for the invisible ones.
No one can take those away.
I couldn't fly with them, but sometimes I could see them...through tears, or through fear...
The rainbow feathers shook and I pulled them around me more snugly.
I tried humming a snatch of my pain song, but it didn't comfort me.
This was fear, not pain.
I didn't have a fear song.
Then lightning struck near o very near and I threw myself out of the corner, screaming, shrieking with the thunder; my voice a high, piping soprano to the thunder's low bellow, point and counterpoint...
My eyes were wide my mouth was a round and perfect "o" my arms stretched as if I was being crucified and my wings flared to fill the room.
point and counterpoint...
When the crash and light faded I crumpled, sobbing with fear. I crawled to the bed, knees and elbows smacking the floor hard and sounding like pistol shots. I whined and cried. The rain-slicked floor was slippery and I fell. My chin hit hard; I bit my tongue. The shock of the impact stopped my crying for a moment and I scuttled under the bed.
As I slid under, the lightning strobing, I grabbed one of the animals on my bed: Boris the bear. I hauled him under with me and held him close. I bit his ear and shuddered. Blood rubbed off on the top of Boris's head.
It was better under the bed. Surely the storm would pass soon, surely...
I pressed myself against the wall and curled up around the bear.
Then, in a silent moment, as if the storm were holding its breath...
The door creaked open.
Under the bed, my wet eyes widened.
Two boots. With each step, thunder. With each step, light.
In a brilliant flash of lightning I saw wet black leather. Boots with rounded toes and low heels. They were caked with mud and blood.
I froze. I stopped breathing. Still, still. I was altogether still.
all. to. get. her.
STILL.
Then the thunder-voice rumbled:
copyright 1995 by Julieann M. Brown-Micko
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