Snippet 1-16-2006 (339 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -1 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by silent_brook <silent_brook.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2006-03-01 11:01:11 EST
The grass was cool, despite the brilliant warmth of the day. It played between her toes as she sat in the grass, tickling as she tapped her foot in time to some silent rhythm. She lay on her back, staring at the great clouds pass above her like angelic leviathans. She lay gently with the affectionate summer sun gazing down upon her and caressing her bare skin; her companions playing in the nearby field. She loved to listen to them while she enjoyed the weather, so rarely did perfect days adorn her leisure time. So often it was the days she was trapped in the dim and drab office of her work that were the most beautiful. Or, perhaps that was a case of greener grass.
"Katie, Katie!" A little girl of five years and three feet ran to her, her hands cradling a treasure near her heart.
"What is it dear?" Kate rolled on to her side and watched Sarah approach, smiling broadly.
"Look what I've found!" She opened her hands before Kate's eyes. Cupped lovingly in her palms was a tiny lizard, perhaps only two inches long.
"My, how on earth did you catch him?"
"He climbed up on my dress... like he wanted me to see him." She smiled at her treasure.
"Well, that is incredible." Lisa came over and smiled at her younger sister.
"She's so excited. Why can't she ever find anything cuddly?" Lisa was only two years older than her sister.
"What do you say we take him over by the creek? Do you think he'd like that?" She stood gracefully and took Lisa's hand. Sarah walked beside them, but could not spare a hand from cradling the fascinating, tiny creature. They walked the three hundred feet across the sunlight field to the edge of the woods where the creek bubbled through the spattering of trees. They had come to know this place well in the last few weeks. Having never really been interested in nature, Kate had never bothered to explore the area in which she lived. She had only taken to discovering what was there after she suddenly acquired two little explorers.
Sarah released the little creature on a rock near the water. It stood a moment, probably elated that it had escaped the clutches of the monster as miraculously as it had, then ran swiftly into the underbrush along the bank.
"Come on, you two. Let's go to the house and get some lunch." They had been out playing for about two hours. Kate had played with them for a time, then retired to read under the tree she had found comfortable; periodically raising her eyes to mark the location of her two charges. Kate had been surprised at how quickly she had taken to her forced motherhood. Sometimes, she still felt that she was in over her head, but those times were usually only when Lisa or Sarah began to cry. Kate felt heroic when she was able to control her own grief in the face of those cherubic tears; it would have been so much easier to simply join them in their pain.
She had lost a sister, a twin; and they a mother. Christine and Kate had been close, much like Lisa and Sarah. They had grown up together, and experienced everything as a pair: their first years of school; their first crushes; their first boyfriends. They had even gotten married the same year.
Kate remembered how happy Christine had been at the wedding. The thrilling way she had looked bravely to the future, and met it with open arms. Her tears of joy at the face of her first daughter, and then her second. She remembered also how angry and sad and scared she had been when Jonathon had been taken from her; her worries that she might never recover enough to raise her children the way she knew they deserved.
In the end, Kate believed it had been the children that saw her through his unexpected death. Kate wasn't sure that she could have done it; an expected divorce had done enough to her that she doubted she would have survived what Christine bore with grace. Each time she remembered her sister, the feelings of rage at the inconstant and illogical world burned her mind, in her weaker moments, when she allowed herself to cry, she thought of all the hateful and terrible people in the world that live each day; in moments like that, she cursed God and his indifference.
She had taken the orphans in without a thought, without a moments pause. They were blood, and her sister would never have had to ask, even if she'd been able to see the future. She had died painlessly, instantly, but messily. The casket was closed on the day of the funeral; Kate worried that not seeing their mother one last time would always haunt the children, far more than simply losing her, she worried that not really getting to say goodbye would make them always incomplete or too full of words unsaid. She cried for them more than for her loss. They were only babies, and they had already endured more pain than was their due.
Kate had always hated injustice. That is why she had become a lawyer; to right the wrongs of the world. She couldn't always do for the world all she wanted, but for the two little worlds that padded through the grass beside her, she could perhaps make amends for the pain they'd suffered. She swore over the grave of her sister that she would work every day to give them happy little worlds to inhabit; a chance to regain the earth's perfection they so wanted to believe. She would strive to take away the thorns sting, and give them back the flowers beauty. It was all she could do for them, and that was the thought that kept her strong in the face of their scared and uncertain tears.
User Reviews
Submitted by silent_brook (user info) at 2006-03-10 12:35:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
It isn't a fragmented story... it is a complete thought. A 'snippet' in this sense is a writing exercise: no thought, no preparation--sit down, start writing. However, I do see your point. Writing exercise or not, it is a little Lifetime-esque. Oh, well.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2006-03-01 11:04:57 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Fragmented stories don't work well. Learn that fast. You need to either make a series, or wrap it up in a nice little package for people to read.
That and this was just a bit too Lifetime channel for me to stomach.