About the size of a quarter, the light sparkled and danced and bobbed and flashed within the space of a square foot or so. Seeing it brought to the bird a sense of happiness; the kind of happiness and freedom it felt in the spring when the plants broke from the earth in a carefree chorus of liberation. Watching it gave the little bird a temporary reprieve from its cold nest of hardened earth and icy snow and reminded it of warm rains and sweet air and dependable sunlight. The light took away its fear. As it watched the light, entertained by its dance in the middle of the cold night, it sensed another presence.

A wolf walked silently through the woods, watching the light, too, as if it was calling him by name. The bird tried to blend into the bush as much as it could. The wolf would be hungry on such a night. But as surely as birds migrate south for winter, as surely as light breaks through darkness, the wolf padded softly right over to where the little bird huddled. It lay down so closely to the bird that its black and gray fur touched the brown feathers.  It, too, watched the dancing light, and through the long night the little bird was warmed by the heat of the wolf until it slept and regained its strength. As morning dawned and the sun broke through the sharp cold of the night, the wolf rose from its place of rest and trotted deeper into the woods.

And, after a snack of dried berries from the bush under which it had hidden, the little bird took flight.

Photo: mrwallpaper.com

A film of ice crystals hung in the air, obscuring the faint light of the gibbous moon and adding their frosty touch to the piercing cold. The woods, quiet in the approaching night, cast long shadows over the sparse ground. A crispy, brown leaf, the refugee of the fall just past, scuttered over the ice-covered snow, caught briefly on a downed tree’s twig, then, slightly ragged from its collision, was caught in the wind’s updraft and smashed against a tree trunk, its crumbling pieces disappearing into the night.

The cold this year had come suddenly, like death; anticipated in the future but never expected in the present. One morning the frost of the evening before had warmed to the happy coolness of autumn. Hardy plants that had withstood the night’s cold showed their oranges and rusts and ambers to a day that warmed the ground again with the promise of more. The sun shone high and bright in a sky of faded blue.

Geese had stopped to rest on the lakes, then rose up again, beckoned by some silent call and formed their V in a goodbye for now salute. Sparrows had danced in the sky in an undulating arch as they made their way to warmer climes.

Then it hit. A cold Arctic wind swept down into the day of promised Autumn warmth and stripped it of its heat. In the bluster of snow and ice that surprised even the birds, one was swept from its migrating course, left behind by the others struggling now to fly fast and high. Carried by the wicked wind, it found some relief in the shelter of a nearby woods; but the wind continued until the day waned, and the exhausted bird huddled under a bare bush as the wind died and the cold remained.

The little bird, its brown feathers covering a downy layer underneath, began to shiver. Its energy was spent, so as day turned to night it lay, as it must, ready for its fate, understanding somehow it had seen its last dawn. It lay under the white light of the moon in the impenetrable cold with nothing to shield it when above the bird the dancing movement of a tiny light caught its attention.

to be continued…

story prompt: Matthew 10: 29-31

She picked up the box and examined it. It was ivory with the raised shape of a deer in the center and outlines of vines and berries traveling over its surface. How often had she passed by this box without noticing the detail that had gone into its design? How many days had she seen it without really looking at it?

Hers was a lifetime of inattention, she thought. A lifetime of distraction and hurry. Life was, after all, so full of details and important things that could not wait. It had happened so quickly that thinking of it now still made her shake her head as if to clear it. A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

“Ms. Stryker?”

She turned and looked at the care attendant.

“Sybil. Just Sybil,” she answered.

“Ms. Stryker, the van is here to take you for your doctor’s appointment.”

A lump began forming in her throat. It would be the same as it had been for over two years now. Always the same. Probing and asking questions over and over again, questions she had by now memorized. The prognosis was set in stone.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she answered, dismissing the attendant with a nod.

Upon learning of her paraplegic state, it had not taken long for her husband to leave her and even less time for her to lose her job. Visitors had come and gone. Family members showed up on a rotating basis, except for her grandmother. Her grandmother had come that first horrible night and had taken a taxi every Sunday after church thereafter, sitting and visiting; telling jokes; singing in her warbling, wavering, winsome soprano; and bringing some small thing now and then – a tin of cookies or an article from the newspaper or a little memento from home. And sometime during each of those visits her grandmother would sit in silent prayer, intent and immoveable.

One time Sybil had said out loud what she thought whenever she saw her grandmother’s eyes begin to close or to stare off into space into a realm through which most others didn’t pass. “Grandma, stop praying for a miracle. It’s done. I’ve accepted it. We need to move on.”

Her grandmother had simply glanced up and caught her eye with an intensity she remembered from her childhood. It was a look that said, “Do not presume to know more than your elder”.

The next Sunday, her grandmother had brought the box from Sybil’s parents’ home where she had left it along with the things of childhood so many years ago. It was one that her grandmother had given to her when she was born. She had stored little treasures in it when she was young, then it had sat on her dresser through years of other, more important things. The Sunday she brought it, her grandmother had set it on her dresser and there it had remained without a glance from its owner.

Just this week, she had felt an inexplicable prompting to examine it, but ignored its pull. Why? It wasn’t as though she had pressing meetings any longer, nor appointments nor social engagements nor visits from friends. Not many, anyway.

The care attendant came to her door again.

“Ms. Stryker, the driver says he’s on a schedule. You really need to come. Here, let me help you,” she said as she moved to take the handles of the wheelchair.

“No,” Sybil said more firmly than she had in a long time. She softened. “No, tell him I need just another minute.”

She lifted the lid, expecting to find some little trinket of a forgotten childhood. None was there. Instead it was filled with slips of paper. She picked up one near the top and read, “Please help her to be a good girl. Bless her life. Keep her safe.”

Sybil’s eyebrows knit in confusion. She picked up another. “I don’t know what’s bothering her at school, but would you please help her? Please send a good friend. Please give her success.”

“She says she’s in love and she doesn’t see him clearly, so I’m asking you to help her see. Or change him. Either one.”

“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you for this dear girl.”

As she pulled slip after slip out of the box, tears burned her eyes as she began to realize what she was reading. Long after the slips should have run out, long after there were more in her lap than could have ever fit in the box, they continued, spilling onto the floor.

“If only that deer had crossed the highway a minute later. If only she had been delayed or left for home sooner. Oh, I know I’m going on like you know I do. Please heal her. Please make her walk again.”

“Please, somehow help her to believe that you are bigger than she is or her doctor is or anything is in this world. Help her to believe in miracles.”

Sybil reached for a Kleenex and dabbed harshly at her eyes. She pulled her chair closer to the dresser to set the box in its place, but as she picked it up, she lost her grip and it began to fall. It would break, she knew. There would be no putting it back together. She lunged for it, and that’s when it happened.

She didn’t fall. And as she stood for the first time in two years, the rescued box in her hands, she looked up. There in the doorway was her grandmother.

“I had a feeling you might want to go for a walk today,” was all she said as Sybil left the wheelchair and walked to the door.

Photo: www.goodfreephotos.com

The snow fell like little diamonds on the two as they walked, deep in conversation. Oblivious to the scenes around them, they reminded the company president of two ants as he glanced down from the window of his top floor office before returning to his work. As the friends made their way past the large window of a corner café, a patron looked out and saw that in the intensity of their conversation, they did not notice the woolen scarf of the one closest to the window had caught on the window ledge, was pulled from where it had carelessly rested on his coat and now lay in the gathering snow beneath. An old woman in a thread-bare coat turned the corner they had just rounded, found the scarf and, crossing herself, bent to retrieve it, wrapping it around her neck to gain its precious warmth. The stars began to come out, winking here and there in the dark velvet sky and casting pinprick lights from their million miles away in the heavens. The two increased their pace, as they trudged up a slight hill in their walk.

The voice of one rose, “I’m telling you, all of us want a miracle,”

“If such things exist,” the other interrupted.

“If such things exist,” the one acknowledged, “but no one wants to be in the place it would take to get one. Nobody wants to be in the place where a miracle is their only option. Who wants to have everything taken away with nothing to fall back on? Who wants to feel so desperate they think they’ll go crazy?”

His companion nodded his head.

“At any rate,” the companion replied, “if someone did witness a miracle,”

“If such things exist,” the one reminded him.

“If such things exist,” the companion agreed,” he would have had to wish for it or ask for it for a very long time, I would think.”

“Oh, no doubt about it,” the one remarked, as they unwittingly passed the life-size crèche in the yard of a local church, “a person would absolutely need to know they needed it before they witnessed a miracle.”