They couldn’t hear the screams or cries. Couldn’t understand as they carry me to some other place, (with carried as a word of nearly perfect interpretation.) Finally, we stop and I slump forward, drained of everything, eyes shut, quietly slipping into a muddy darkness almost willingly. What more could be done? I’d been a good girl, done what daddy said. Their voices continue nevertheless, more meaningless words, and someone else comes into the clearing—adding his high-pitched vocal’s to the confusing slop.

It seemed like eternity of humming, whispers; then suddenly salvation. The ground rose to meet me. (Or I’d tumbled over to meet it.) Had da let me fall? Halfway expecting to see a slanted image, one lid crested, barely a glimpse of the upright shadows that surround this body and its trapped soul before vision goes dark again, dirty violet slides closed once more.

Warmth, unlike the forest floor, there is no muck or cold wet to greet cooled flesh. Like a heartbeat or the first rays of sunlight on a snowy day. I sink into this strange offering with childlike trust—knowing no different than simply allowing what will happen to happen.

There is something more than heat and the promise of comfort, a raw strength flows into limp muscles. For a moment I can do nothing but lay still in astounded shock, there is no pain now, only a strange pulling sensation. Was I dying? “Daddy?” I don’t feel like I’m fading away back into the darkness, no, it is that gentle tugging that is making me whole again. As if the fractured part of my physical body is coming back together. Lips flap apart and for the first time in a long time I stand without the need of assistance.

Eyelids open, revealing a muddled gaze of confusion and disbelief. As a newborn I hold a wobbly but strong stance, breathing out in soft soundless heaves. There a man and woman ahead, one with… “Da!” the word is a whisper, but my tone finally lacks the previous exhaustion which had rendered me helpless before; it is easy to find the latch which securely opens a threshold between myself and him. An image flows between us, a picture of flying ravens and within that picture I narrow to the feathers. Ever the wondering mind, ever the learning heart, “Bird man,” I exclaim softly, intrigued not by the fact I’d taken a huge leap into living, but by the visual cue that this stranger had a unique gift.

Perhaps I wasn’t so unusual after all.