Promises

Chapter One

Pheona, had lived a long life. Her back was so stooped that it became a hunch. Her face was so lined with wrinkles that it looked as if a giant had imprinted his thumbnails into her cheeks. Her skin was pinched and twisted as though it had never known youth.

One day, Pheona went to a nunnery and took up the cloth. She prayed, she ate, she slept, and she sewed. Yet she never spoke a word.

One day when she was sitting underneath a peach tree, letting the last of the sun beat down on her withered body a Nun approached her. The Nun told her that there was a young girl dying in the Sister's infirmary and her last wish had been for a story,

Pheona picked up her sewing and followed the Nun. Fiona had been waiting for this moment for years.

Before, they entered the infirmary the Nun told her that the girl was foreign to their lands and that she had caught an incurable disease. The disease was fatal and the doctors told her parents that she would not survive the flight back home.

The girl had a room of her own with a blossom tree hanging over the window. Apart from the blossom tree, the room was bare of beauty and the only evidence of her being was a jug resting on an unread book. When Pheona  came in the Sisters were sitting cross-legged on the floor chanting prayers and the words to songs that only the followers of the oldest faiths know.

Pheona, raised her arms and the Sisters walked out and she sat on the stool next to the bed, her breath wheezing as she bent knees.

She looked at the girl intently. The girl was wearing still wearing western clothing, The girl's hair was a dark red and skin her was pale beneath her sun-burn.

Although, the girl's body was so limp and weak Pheona, could sense what had been a vibrant yet calm energy gently flickering from her.  Pheona, had a feeling that this energy was the only thing that was the girl alive.