Write on Wednesday: The Storm

This week Write on Wednesday came back from winter break, and I am very excited to ease the writing muscles back into work. The prompt for this week was the things that trees tell us, though I admit that in my free writing I strayed a little from the prompt. It is a little longer than usual, but I found that after starting, I couldn't stop! I guess I had really missed writing. Great to read everyone else's, and I am so happy we are all back!

Claire




This was the storm that would never end. Night after night the wind screamed through the cracks in the door, wailed down the chimney and screeched under the floorboards. Mama and Papa smiled with tired smiles, reassured us that it would end, it would end soon, but it never did. We grew hungrier and hungrier, until one day Papa put on every stitch of clothing we owned and climbed out the door into the roaring tempest. I knew he would never return.


I remember wondering why the earth was so heart wrenchingly angry at us, so depressed and irate. Waves beat at the beach, and with every punch of surf the distance between our tiny house and the monstrous ocean grew smaller. The salt made our skin red and flaky, and our faces grew puffy and sore. We were never warm, as the wood for the stove had run out quite a long time ago. After a while, we just slept as much as we could, huddled together, attempting to ignore the roaring and slip into the dreamy world of slumber, where there was sunshine and Papa was still with us. When Mama began to hack and wheeze, I knew we could not last much longer. 


Like Papa, I muscled the door open in the middle of the night and slipped out, knowing that the only chance at survival was to leave and find help. But who could be alive in a storm such as this? I ran in a daze through wind and rain, buffeted like a toy in the hands of my sister. 


The cold was the worst part. I could not feel my hands, and my eyes were all but frozen shut with a cake of salt around the edges. They burned, and my exposed fingers were numb and raw. I admitted to myself that I had failed. I had failed my family, myself, and I was going to die out here alone. 


It was the overturned tree that saved me. I bumped into it, literally hitting my red nose against the trunk. The maelstrom around me had strengthened as I walked, staggered down the beach, searching for something or someone to save me. The bark, though it should have been dead long ago, was warm to the touch, and emanated a heat unlike any I had felt before. As I slipped under the branches at the base of the trunk, I could feel the life of the tree pouring into me. The wind howled with vengeance, the waves beat against the beach with new vigor, but my savior had come.