Novel

Every wake of day takes upon itself a promise:  Wonder?  Compliance?  Defeat?  Victor Hugo?

The wind of afternoon, even in stillness, arrives.

Then:  We leave our professions and confessions and go to:

1.  Nap  (Yay!  I'm all for it.  My bed loves me and I love Her.  My ship comes in.)
2.  Chores (boooooo.  But the tomato plants really like the water, and, what the hell, it only costs 37% less than it will when KYAmericano gets their way.  Spill some, even.)
3.  Think about dinner.  (Tom takes care of that, back to One.)
4.  I forget what I was saying.  Let's go with......nap.  Yay!

And then, every now and then, I get a chance to be Danny.

"That summer," his family called it.  Even though it started in the spring, in April.  Or, "that year."  If they said "that summer" or "that year," they all know what it meant.

Or Sarah.

That time she cracked open an egg, and instead of a yolk, a bloody chick embryo fell into the bowl.  The maimed chick felt important, somehow, a sign of how bleak and bad things had become.  An omen.

Danny and Sarah and me.  Not napping, or choring, or dining.  Just, well, living.  Novel.  Fiction?

The kindness of strangers.

Thank you for your fiction, Katrina Kittle.  Thank you for letting me be Danny and Sarah for a bit on the wind of an afternoon.  And how novel to understand others.  Novel.