Deviation Actions
Description
Dust settled on the road as the sun crept lower in the sky. Buzzards flew overhead inspecting the earth below. The target of their hungry gaze was a wagon crash on a dirt road, and more specifically the two bodies that lay around it. The first was a man of medium build, roughly age 50, with thick, dark brown hair who was wearing a pair of tattered trousers with a white cotton shirt. The wagon, which was loaded with all sorts of trinkets like silverware and dancing shoes, had collapsed on its side, spilling out all its contents on the road and crushing the man's body just below the abdomen. The empty look in his eye bodes ill for his fortune but well for the appetites of his winged reapers.
Across the road about 30 yards from the crash lies the body of a young child, barely 9 years old, in a fit of pain and silent moaning. The child had light brown hair cut close to the scalp except for the bangs, which hung about 1/2 in. above the eyes. One would assume the child a male based upon the choppy short haircut and tattered britches upon it's body, but those people would be wrong. For here, in the dirt, wreathing in pain, lies a little girl named Joy.
The sky grew dark and the sounds of the buzzard's large wings grew closer and closer with every waking minute. Joy felt she had been laying in the dirt for ages as she rolled onto her back, now fully aware of the tragedy that has befallen her. A few minutes ago she was gleefully hanging onto her father's arm, listening to him sing songs from his days of herding cattle in a village far to the North. she clung to every syllable, imagining the soft blue sky and the white fluffy clouds as they sunk over the horizon of a small pasture near the hills. The romance of the scene was not lost on her, a young girl with a heart for adventure and a father willing to give her just that.
It had been 3 years since famine took her mother away and Father was forced to abandon the homestead to tax collectors. With little to no money the only choice this beggar father had was to peddle his family possessions away on the market. Life after that was hard for the duo but there never was a dull moment. At least, not until now.
The moon shined upon the wreck as Joy made her way towards the wagon. she stopped to examine a pair of pink lace slippers they had purchased several weeks earlier from a kind craftswoman on the western coast. After the moment of reflection, Joy looks up to see what has become of her dear old father. In front of her eyes lies a lifeless corpse half exposed from under the splintered mass of pinewood. Her eyes sunk into her skull at the sight. Of course children are taught to hold onto hope, and thus her fear quickly became desperation as she rushed to her father's side.
his coat stained with blood and his body cold as ice, she pushed against his large chest several times attempting to wake him from his slumber. "DADDY! DADDY! WAKE UP!" She continued this pattern for several minutes, adding more tears and despair with each try. Finally she gave up and slumped back, her blue eyes drowning and her voice hoarse. This was it, this was the end for her, she would die on this road beside her father and everything they had worked to achieve in life. she so greatly wished for a miracle, some kind of magic to save her father like in those fairy tales of old.
As she lays her head down upon the hard earth she closes her eyes. "It's all a dream." she tells herself. "I'm still clinging to daddy's arm on the front of the wagon, his story has put me to sleep."
"It's all a dream"
"It's all a dream"
"It's all a dre...
"It's...
...
Joy shot up in her bed, making her long, thick, waist length braid fly in front of her face. The sight of the rope of hair snapped her to her senses. She was laying in the master bed of the upstairs room of Palace de StClaire, and she was 18. The cold night air blew against her face from a window in the corner she had left open by accident. the chill had brought back a foul memory. yes, most foul indeed.
