What Grows in the Gale and Wood

The gale was dry this morning. No tears sprang from her howling maw. No sobs crashed against her circular visage. No misguided thoughts of guilt and grief wracked her brain, pushing her heart to the brink of total despair.

No. Abigail was quiet this morning, as quiet as the windless day outside her window, her thunderous eyes blank and dark, The usual electric spark of defiance that dominated her character gone, as though snatched by a spirit of the skies. Abigail was in shock and in denial. The day had not come, the sun had not risen above the canopy of the city, and her grandfather still had another night to sleep, another twelve hours to enjoy the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the soft beat of his heart, and the tender embrace of his blankets, pulled loosely over his body.

But the day had, indeed, come, the sun had, defiantly, risen over the city in a glorious halo of light and life, and her grandfather, to Abigail's despair, had just woken up from his last night on earth.

She heard the bedroom door swing gently open, and her mother's bare feet muffled the sounds of her footsteps. Abigail's heart lurched. The time had come.

"Gale?" her mother's voice floated on the warmth of the air, swirling into Abigail's ears,

"Honey, it's... well, it's time, sweetie. Time to get ready..."

Her words broke at the last syllable, and the warmth of the room turned icy. Abigail could almost imagine a claw of frost spread across her pillow. She gripped her blankets, gripped until she could feel her fingernails pierce into her palms. She breathed deeply into her pillow, a breath that was absorbed by the soft fabric. It was time. Time to get up...

With tremendous courage and with incredible strength, she pushed herself out of her bed, her bare feet sliding into the carpet. She gazed longingly at her bed, for it was a place of blissful sleep that carried away the pain of her waking life. She wanted, more than anything else in this world, to fall back into the nothingness of the night, but her soul would be consumed in guilt if she were to miss her grandfather, so she changed into comfortable clothes and pulled the bedroom door open, leaving the comforting atmosphere behind.

She didn't remember dropping the dry eggs her mother had made for her into her mouth. She didn't remember hugging her dogs Walter and Belle goodbye. She didn't remember exiting the apartment at her mother's side and locking the door behind her.

But she did remember the sky, which mocked her sorrow with its melting smile, it's gray face swirling in a soup of dreariness. Raindrops balanced in the air before her like the ornaments on a Christmas tree. How cruel, Abigail thought, for the sky to behave this way. A man should die when the skies are filled with the blue of a sapphire, when the sun's light dances across the world, when wispy breezes gallop like horses over the sun-kissed heads of the emerald trees. Warm breezes should trump frigid ones, and dryness should trump wetness. The sky should be singing, not crying, like it was today.

Together, mother and daughter walked down the street, watched as nameless faces in black coats passed them by. They were monsters in the darkness who cared not for the awful misfortunes of others, too absorbed in their own lives to care. It was silly for her to feel anger towards these people, but she couldn't help it. She felt so alone in her grief, even with her mother at her side. Her loneliness smothered her in a hot blanket, withholding oxygen from her lungs, threatening to choke her. She breathed in the crisp air to dispel this heat, but it only brought more misery to her beaten heart.

She didn't remember the walk to the hospital. The only image that poked at the forefront of her mind as she walked was that of her grandfather. She could see his boisterous laugh. She could see the way he would shake his head back when he was irate. She could see the results of the CAT scan, and her grandfather's horrified expression as he gazed at the image on the computer screen, a tumor that had nestled into his brain like a cuckoo bird's eggs placed subtly into a woodpecker's nest. The last image was the one that swam before her most vividly.