A tree, the wind and a car.

Let's....

Outside the shack the winds are raging ; the winds are distant so the sounds of the wind are muffled, rain is on it’s way.

Inside the shack a fire is burning in the stove, it is warm and the muffled distant sounds are comforting ; the shack has doubled windows so the sounds are deceptive.

A tree stands outside the shack ; the tree is old and the wind is troubling her, she is thinking of falling. If she does she will destroy the shack.

Inside the shack, the man sleeping in the single bed near the stove where the fire is warming, is unaware of most of this ; the muffled sounds of the raging wind reach the edge of his dreaming, the edgy creaks of the old tree do not.

Lucky for him that today is not the day that the tree will fall, something resolute arrises from deep within her roots and she decides to resist the onslaught and show the wind that she is an equal.

The tree is an oak.

The man's dreams are distant, also muffled and in someways resistant. 

She is there of course and she would resist if this was not the man’s dream ; her own dreams touch neither this shack or this bed.

But she can hear the wind.

She is sitting in her car at the side of a small road that leads somewhere else but the motor is no longer running ; she is too frightened by the storm to continue. 

She tries to use her mobile phone to speak to someone but there is no signal and in her confusion and fear she has forgotten who it was.

She can see in the east the dark clouds where the rain is waiting. This rain will be violent and take the lives of at least eight people.

She will not be among the eight but she will know one of them, though the connection is distant.

And fading.

And asleep.

In the west.

formerly published in The Archives.