A Cruel Jest?

1

Mori looks up and stretches her back. The garden is almost done. Thank goodness, it's not as easy on her as it once was. She chuckles to herself, at sixty plus nothing is as easy as it used to be but she can't complain after all she still has her health and enough to get by.

The breeze changes bringing with it a chill and a cloud covers the sun. Mori looks up surprised. The storm is coming in far more quickly than she had anticipated. And with her thoughts the wind picks up as well turning the gentle welcome breeze into a powerful gale.

Damn. Mori picks up her gardening tools and rushes back to the little cabin that sits only a hundred yards away, but the rain unleashes itself before she makes it back. These spring storms can be vicious and wild and the sooner one takes cover the better it is for them.

These storms are especially wild and quite often will take out her electricity. Mori prepares for the inevitable first by locking the ten locks she has on her door. It takes forever to heat her little cabin due to the stone it is made from and she doesn't need the cold storm winds to keep it that way. Not only that, if the storms are strong enough to blow the door open, she doesn't think she'd be strong enough to close it again.

Then she makes sure the candles will last more than minutes and replaces the ones that are little more than stubs. Lastly she checks the lamp and is satisfied that there is plenty of oil in it, more than enough to last the whole night if need be. Only after all this was done did she bother to change out of her soaking wet clothes.

The bathroom is cold and Mori wishes she could take a hot shower but with the lightning now flaring so wildly it wouldn't be a good idea. Once she had filled a tub during a lightning storm and the cabin had been hit. Mori had watched in fixed fascination at the play of lightning on the water before realization had hit her. If that had happened even a minute later she'd have been dead. 

Even now remembering how close she had come to being fried still makes Mori sick. She turns her back firmly on the combination of shower and tub. She takes the old worn towel and quickly dries herself off and places clean dry clothes on.

She goes back into the main cabin and lights a fire in the wood burning stove. Once the fire is going good she sets the stew from the crockpot  into a pot on the stove. She would like to eat tonight and if the electricity goes her food won't cook.

The spring storm has made her cabin cooler than it had been, but the stove is already warming things up. Mori wonders if maybe she should set up her little heated area, she doesn't seem to warm up as easily as she did when she was younger either.

Her thoughts are side tracked when the storm opens up for real. The sound of the rain hitting the glass of her window sound like bullets. She wonders if maybe she should have closed the shutters this time and will have to buy a new window for her mistake.

While she watches the play of lightning through the glass and water the power dies. She sighs and wonders how many days she'll have to wait this time? She's the most remote user of power on the grid and the one they tend to forget about. 

She turns away from her mesmerizing view and starts lighting the candles and lastly the lamp. She looks at her cabin and smiles to herself, when she was younger she would have thought that the atmosphere would be considered romantic. At her age and her experiences she knows the truth, it means loneliness.

She turns her back to the room and goes back to studying the storm, pushing unwanted memories of the past where they belonged. She should go stir her dinner before it gets burned like she did all those years ago.

Mori is angry at herself to allow those thoughts and feelings emerge. She locked those memories away for nearly forty years now, no need to let them out.

After stirring her stew she returns to her fascinating watch of the storm. She doesn't even turn when her door blows open. It was just as inevitable as the power going out. Don't all the stories start out, It was a dark and stormy night?

"Would you please shut the door? I don't think I could against the storm and the wind will steal what little warmth is in the cabin. This night is no night for anyone to be out." She finds herself saying. When the door opened all the candles were blown out. The only light source other than nature's grand display outside is her hurricane lamp. So when she turns she's not surprised that she isn't able to see the figure standing in her doorway clearly.

What she is surprised to see is him reply to her request by actually doing it. She had long ago learned to mask all emotion even to herself so she knew that he wouldn't be able to tell that she was shocked. She decided to push her luck just a little further, "If you would, lock the door again? Otherwise the wind will blow it open as soon as you move." Once more the stranger does as she requests.

Mori shakes herself out of her incredulous stupor and moves to the large cabinet that stands between the window and the door. "There are no clothes here that will do for you, however I have clean dry towels for you to dry off with and clean blankets to wrap yourself in. " She takes the items out of the cabinet even as she names them.

Although she can't see that much of the man she can feel his regard of her. She doesn't let that faze her either as she moves over to the bed. "The quality isn't very good, but they are all I have. If you wish I'll set up the quilts that will make this an alcove that will warm quickly for you and give you privacy as well."

Mori goes to stand on her bed to do just as she said when she is surprised by the stranger taking the quilt from her and placing it on the ropes that will make it possible for the quilt to become a temporary wall.

He has three quilts up in no time and the little area heats up quickly. "Thank you, My Lord." Mori quickly backs away from him finding his nearness overpowering. He must be a very powerful  one. 

Mori bows to him. "My apologies Lord for my lack of respect earlier." Mori had been taught how to act towards them of course, everyone is. Lack of respect could mean not just death but torture and death to a lot of people. She just had never had to before, nor had anyone in this valley. This little pocket had never been claimed or visited by the Lords that ruled over them.

"Your name?" The stranger demands and Mori thinks she hears amusement coming from him, she's not sure though because the sound of the rain on the tin roof is almost deafening. 

Mori doesn't dare not answer him though, "Mori." She's confused as to why one of them would ask, after all humans are nothing more than cattle or brood mares. But as always her emotions are kept locked up tight.

With every moment the stranger says nothing and does nothing Mori is convinced that she won't survive the night. Yet, a thought that would terrify others doesn't her. Death and she have long ago come to an agreement. She figured that at best she only had twenty years left on her anyway. A quick end by this stranger is better than she dared hope for really.