Peculiar Girl

Porcupine Bones

Porcupine skeletons danced on moon streaked ice, propelled by fishing line stretched over the lake and to the hands of a girl. She twirled her fingers and flicked her wrists, watching the ghosts skitter and hop, joyous in their lively endeavor.

Fissures ran along the ice, chasing one another as they bounced beams like twinkling Christmas lights on a decked home of cheer. She imagined smiling faces shining through the window as laughter spills like smoke up the chimney and ribbons spin around the tree on red and green foil boxes.

This was not the girl's first time. Her peculiar interests left her alone and isolated. The time she spent in public was time spent with people giving her side long glances, where skittish whispers followed her shadowed footsteps, leaving echoed impressions in the snow. Reactions that only pushed her further away from furrowed brows and turned backs. It pulled her deeper into her strange hobbies, allowing her to have solace in the only friendships she ever had.

As a little girl, roaming the dense woods with a butterfly net she collected small bones of small beasts. She dreamed of bringing them back to life. Grateful to her, the beasts would never leave her side, trailing her wake as faithful furry friends.

The closest she came was watching them prance from afar, an illusion even she knew was sad. At 17 years old she was still desperately alone.

The floating bones gleamed and paused. The girl threw the lines on the ground, anger swelled like a balloon in her chest until she couldn't breathe. A wind charged over the ice, pressing and pushing the snow off branches to fall heavily atop her head. Wrapping her arms around herself, she shook with an urgency to stay warm as tears spilled on her cheeks and a forced breath steamed from her frozen lungs.

© Ash Huntley

Shoe Predicament

Her name was Stay, and that's what she did.

Stay wasn't bothered with going places, public places, walking on even cement in dull tones wasn't for her. Nor were the narrowed eyes and hunched shoulders curving away from her view. Pain of rejection wasn't something to get used to, it was something to bear. She wore it in black lines scattered on her arms, dots in deep blue and plum ran down her fingers. Reminders of those who snubbed her, Stay only had herself.

Stay was not self sufficient. Craving companionship was heartbreaking. The desire to grow crops of corn - paper cuts of green as she stroked their leaves, wheat - haze of gold in the rising sun bleeding through her windows, strawberries - hearts dotted with seeds to give life, treasures to hold in handfuls, and pumpkins - seeds to bake and a shell to, carve faces and line drive, was devastating

Land surrounded her, but it was not her own. Stay could not grow her self sustaining nature. Instead she relied on the small markets that opened in town every Sunday morning.

Blending in was easier. Strange folk came out of the woods to buy strange things. Strange folk sold strange things. Stay tried her best to appear less strange than them, but the town knew her. She was not just strange with broken teeth or dirty hair. Not just strange living in a wooden box with no electricity or plumbing. Not just strange eating small beasts over a small fire. Not just strange, but peculiar.

Sunshine sprinkled in, creeping along her pale wood floor, casting colors of bright red, green and blue from her glass window depicting a beheading. Time for the market.

Except, where was her other shoe? Stay had few shoes. Preferring to be barefoot she abstained  from wearing them. They were tight on her feet, pushing on her toes and weighing her down. They were necessary.

A mint green shoe with red laces. She found the left foot hanging from a ceiling hook in a closet full of nets where it belonged. Scowling at the shoe, she sighed and set it down. A final glare before she plopped down on the worn brown rug in front of the closet and tugged the shoe onto her bare foot, "Where's your fellow?" she asked the shoe, cocking her head as she tied a bow.

The shoe was pristine. Only wearing it on well worn trails on Sunday mornings, the colors were vibrant and the sole barely used. Stay scrubbed her foot with a hard bristle brush in the bath before putting them on.

Left foot on, Stay stood and hopped around the house in search of the right. She did not hop on the shoe, but on her bare foot. The weight of the left shoe like society crushing her into a skin that wasn't her's, into an idea her mind couldn't comprehend.

"These damned shoes and this damned place!" Stay hollered as she hopped from one room to another. The silence called back, "Hush".

© Ash Huntley

Dreams of Cranes

Origami was one of the few things Stay had that connected her to her mother. A woman she barely remembered. Her face a pale blur haloed in dark brown. Slim fingers and soft hands deftly folded colorful squares of paper into animals for Stay to play with. Stay would lay on her stomach, chin in hands, watching paper fold and fold and fold. Feet kicked in anticipation.

Purple giraffe, pink and brown paisley hippo, blue lion, polka dot fox and every color cat. Every pattern in every color imaginable took the form of cranes. Cranes adorned every crevice and nook of Stays room, slowly spilling out into the house and sometimes outside. A mobile of them circled above her as a baby, the mobile which now collected early morning dusk in her childhood room, rarely ventured into.

Cranes in corners, cranes in socks and cranes soaring down from an open refrigerator. Cranes lining a path to the frozen lake on a bright January day.

Footprints followed the cranes to the lake, Stay followed both. A child skipping, giddy for a surprise, grinning, hair flowing out behind her. Bare skin against the cold winter wind. A childhood whimsy at what she might find.

An empty frozen lake with a small jagged hole. A soft ripple spilled out, then receded.  Then again. Slower, slower. Stay never saw her mother. Stay returned home. Young, cold, old, alone, to a home filled with empty-hearted, color-filled cranes.

Stay dreamed of cranes. Cranes crying frozen tears. Cranes drowning in bright sunshine. Cranes flying with her upon the wings. Her dreams filled with cranes until she could not stand the loneliness of them. She spent years dreaming of cranes and  morning after morning folding them. She made hundreds of them, placing them together to create one larger than life.

Shades of purples, greens, and blues. Oranges and aqua, yellows and reds. And two large patches of black for beady eyes.The towering crane stood ten feet tall and fifteen feet long.

Spring time and a confused young teen, Stay lifted the large crane easily. The smooth paper warm and comforting on her skin, the smell of paper and ink hugged her as she took it to the lake.

Setting it on the edge, Stay peered out to where her mother disappeared. Face to the sun, she took a deep breath of wet greenery and new light. The wood and moss full of life and sounds of beasts roamed around her. Eyes filled with rainbows and cranes, she gently shoved the memorial into the water, a final goodbye.

© Ash Huntley

The Finger

"Stay."

Her mother said.

"Stay here, don't follow."

The voice a high clear bell, distorted through time, calling over an open field of long grass. A toddler barely able to follow, she stayed. She stayed until she knew it as her name. Then she started to waddle over.

"I said stay." Mother would snap. Stay remembered being told what to do. She learned the difference of her taught name and its meaning. She stayed.

What am I staying away from? She wondered.

Stay was a mystery to herself.

She stayed still when an accident in the kitchen took her left ring finger at 15. She cried out without a sound. Air crept through her tightened throat as she stared, astonished at her finger lying in a pool of blood. Her mind became fuzzy, seeing her finger unconnected to her hand.

It was no longer her finger, but a finger. It paled considerably in seconds. She panicked. Stay had no one to call out for, no one to tell her what to do or how to take care of it. Still scared of the town, she did the only thing she could think of.

Gas stove on high and a metal spoon stuck to the flame, she waited for it to glow orange. She could barely breathe at the sight of the absurd amount of blood dripping down to a puddle at her feet. She turned her mind off. Without hesitation, despite the knot in her stomach, Stay thrust the spoon to the nub of her finger.

A scream seared out of her body, her body convulsed and shrieked with the pain of it. Hot. Stinging. Searing flesh. Doubling over, she dropped the spoon. Tears bubbled up and spilled over, blurring the horrific vision of her hand.

Eyes squeezed shut, she moaned. Terrified at what had happened and what she did. It all transpired in minutes. The only sound left was her subsiding sobs. The smell made her retch: the iron of her blood, the smoldering spoon burning into the rug it bounced onto. Everything was hot and metal.

Stay clutched her hand to her chest, curled on the floor lying in her blood. It cooled and congealed to her side, forming against her, wrapping around her.

Half unconscious and unable to move, Stay imagined a pottery piece in place of her finger. Bone white with glossy forget-me-nots. An intricate series of thin leather strips would hold it in place and allow small movements. She would start it the next day.

© Ash Huntley

A Prickly Thorn

Admiring a bush she didn't recognize, Stay reached down and plucked a thorn from a brittle branch. She rubbed the smooth thorn between her fingers, pressing her finger's soft flesh to it. Her skin indented, swallowing the plant until her skin broke, giving into the earth's life.

A bead of blood bubbled up and burst free from the thin skin. It took up a spectacular amount of space and volume compared to the pinprick that allowed it forth.

Bright as the morning's sun, the spot of red hovered in the cusp of the world at the edge of her finger. A gust of air rattled through the trees and pushed the bubble. It broke from tension and seeped down her finger, into her palm, down one of her life's paths.

A moment gone.

© Ash Huntley

An Orange Birthday

Stay wanted an orange cake for her birthday. She wanted it to be bright as the sun and sweet on her tongue. Oranges were common in the area, growing in groves in abundance on the other side of town. Stay’s mother didn’t often bring oranges home, she was keen on red fruit: strawberries ranging from blood red to lip pink to sun-kissed peach, raspberries in small bundles to be munched on in one day, watermelons cut in slices, red apples with shiny skin, cherries with their pits to be spit in competition; Stay and her mother giggling as the grass became littered with cherry seeds, secret hopes of them growing played like a song in their minds.

Stay begged her mother weeks prior to her birthday for an Orange cake. It started with simple suggestions of how fun orange would be, her mother would suggest pink strawberries or apple pie. After a week Stay’s mother shook her head with a small smile as Stay talked about the skin of the oranges making funny faces on the cake, whole slices of orange within the cake, the possibility of tarts and orange pancakes for breakfast.

Stay, at eight years old, woke up on her birthday to find oranges heaped in woven baskets and piled in pulled out desk drawers. They covered the chairs and sat in bowls covering every flat surface higher than the floor. Orange peels filled the kitchen sink and fell scattered on the kitchen's tiled floor. The floor slick with juice and rinds, Stay’s feet crinkled as she walked, her skin sticking, wanting to stay attached to the sweet coating.

Orange cream, chocolate covered orange segments, candied pecan rolls and caramelized orange rinds, orange butter and orange banana bread. Orange frosting on a frozen orange cake, hollowed half oranges filled with mousse, a bowl of rising yeast, no doubt filled with oranges, cinnamon sticks soaking in thick orange syrup and oranges in the freezer, peeled and unpeeled, as popsicles and fused in ice. Oranges soaked in jars of various liquids full of spices, oranges sliced, diced, whole and squished.

The smell overpowered stay, a waking dream as the world around her turned into the color, smell and taste of orange. Stay's eyes watered, Orange. She could smell the tangy color as she hurried, blind, to find her mother outside making orange jam, oranges piled beside her waiting to become some new delightful creation.

The warm air of the summer morning steamed over the dew speckled ground, the orange sun rose in the sky, a happy birthday lighting its way into Stay’s heart. Stay dances, her mother laughed as she continued to peel oranges, tossing the rinds into a boiling pot over a crackling fire, the segments being set aside to slowly simmer in another pot. The scent was intoxicating. Stay plucked a segment from the pot and plopped it in her mouth, the warm juices flowed down her throat, thick and tangy it puckered her cheeks. She grabbed a segment of rind from her mother’s hand and stuck it in her mouth, sucking out the morsels of juice and giving her mother an orange smile.

Stay’s orange birthday was the best birthday she ever had, it lasted for weeks, remnants of orange constantly being found and the smell lingering until this very day. The smell of her home would forever be wood, smoke, and oranges.

© Ash Huntley

The Wooden Table

Gnarly wood with knots and holes, divots and rings in shades of pale sand to roasted walnuts ran smoothly under Stay’s finger tips. Her porcelain finger caught in a deeper groove before jumping back on track with the rest of her hand lazily tracing the ancient lines. The wood table appeared roughly made; wide, uneven patches of wood set together with pegs, the grains not matching as her eyes jumped from one panel to another. Stay could only assume her mother, or possibly the father she never knew, had made it before she was born. Sitting strong in the center of the kitchen, the table had always held what was post important: a place to fold cranes, to build cakes and skin rabbits. She had bled onto the table, coffee rings almost created a pattern like a dream catcher created filigree along the edges. Gouges in the wood from an angry knife stabbed deep while shallower points were created to hold the blade in thought.

Stay imagined the wood holding onto her memories.  With no mother, father or people to remember or create memories with her, the table was the only one she could imagine capable. Once a living thing, growing strong and tall, reaching for the sky in an endless craving for life, it understood.

Reminiscent and in need of a friend, Stay brought out her old friends. The porcupine bones were still tied together with string being held together like puppets ready to dance and run with her. Stay admired the contrast as she set the bones on the wood table. Smooth creamy bones against rough woods. The combination screamed time and life at her, life gone and time always going. The tree had grown into the earth, sinking roots into the ground while branches spread into the sky. Bones of the porcupine held the life and structure of the animal while the beast remained unaware of its skeleton, the only part of the creature left. The wood and the bones would continue to live on in death, time deepening what they once were. Everything was backwards. The tree and porcupine they were dead but in death remained alive forever, they held age as time went on. Both so beautiful and so different.

Stay craved immortality in bones.

She imagined her body lying on the long kitchen table. Her form slowly decomposing and the wood soaking up what it could of her body, allowing her soul and essence to become part of the world until years drift by and it would only be her bones left on the table. Creamy, slender and elegant cradled by the table, her small bony fingers settling in the grooves of the wood, her skull pitched back to rest along a worn knot in ecstasy.

Stay rubbed the back of her head, feeling the gentle curve of her skull bend in toward her spine, the delicate balance of her entire being resting at that pivotal point. She couldn’t help wonder at how easy it would be.

Standing up and pushing away from the table, Stay shoves those thoughts away. Thinking of life and death and the potential immortality of death is dangerous. Though she never knew what happened to her mother for certain, she felt it in the center of her heart; her mother was dead.

Stay’s mother had problems. One of the comforting things Stay read in her many books was every single person had a multitude of problems. They could have problems that were solved but created new problems, problems that followed them through life and problems they never even know they had. That was the kind of problem Stay’s mother had. The kind of problem that ate away at her happiness and told her she wasn’t ok the way she was until she didn’t know how to feel. She thought the only way she could feel normal again was through pain. Stay had seen the scars forming on her mother’s arms and peeking under the hem of her shorts on her thighs.

The life left her eyes until she looked at Stay with nothing buy greyness. There were moments when Stay thought she was ok again, when her mother would fold cranes and line them on the sill in the kitchen, she would bake a strawberry tart and dust it with powdered sugar, blowing it like a cloud over the table and smiling through the cloud at Stay. The times of momentary rightness were quickly shadowed by hours, sometimes days, of stagnation. Her mother would sit in the living room staring out the window, barely moving. No more cuts, only staring into the woods as if waiting for something. Was she waiting for Stay’s father to return? Was she waiting for a reason to live?

Her mother had a problem she didn’t know she had and she couldn’t fix it. Pills might have helped her. There was a pharmacy in town and an old, kind doctor Stay saw once as a child when she had a fever. But, her mother didn’t go. She went to the market and bought food and other necessities as if she could bake it all away.

Now Stay glared at the table that held the confections of her mother’s love. The table that taunted her with life and death, making a mockery out of all Stay knew. The table soaked in their life and love and acted like its support was enough to give in return. Did it keep her mother alive? Did the hard-hearted table stop Stay’s mother from hurting herself? Did it offer support when Stay cut her finger off? Perhaps 18 years with this table was enough, maybe it was time for her to move on from the problems of her mother and make this home her own.

 Stay wanted to stay alive. The table sucked the life out of her. It would stand like an unmoving stone as a constant reminder of the pain her mother held, making it her own. It would cut at her heart making her wonder at her father and hold resentment toward her mother.

The house had an unused landline she could dust off to call information and get a technician to install internet. Then buy an old laptop from the resale shop and purchase a new table online. Stay wouldn't have to leave the house often. She could remake the home she had into anything she wanted, a Parisian coffee shop or a Buddhist temple.

With the decision made, Stay took her porcupine pals and hung them from a hook above the kitchen window. Opening the window allowed a breeze to pulsate through, the bones becoming chimes as they gently knocked on one another like laughter.

The table would have to go.

© Ash Huntley

Glass

"What the--"

Stay nearly tripped over a box at her front door. Jumping over it she huffed and threw a glare over her shoulder at the stationary brown box neatly taped without a label, sitting perfectly intact on her porch. What the hell was it doing there? She hadn't ordered anything and nobody ever sent her things. Stay didn't know anyone who would.

Someone placed this box here. Someone walked up her front steps and set it down. The item inside given to her with purpose. The person who left it and left knowing what they wanted her to do with it. The whole moment felt surreal as she stared at the box and her throat swelled with the confusion. Stay walked around the box, going back inside to the safety of her home. Sitting down on her entryway rug she stared at the box with the screen door between them.

Stay lost track of time, as she sometimes did, staring at the box. The sun traveled across the sky, rising up and over the house wrapping its warm light like a hug. Only a hazy deep orange ray crept toward the box while the rest sat in cold shadow. Stay didn't touch the box. She got up from her spot, legs sore and aching at the knees from sitting cross legged - she stretched and cracked her spine. With a final glance at the offender, Stay closed the heavy front door and locked it.

* * *

The box lay open on the old wooden table of the kitchen, each flap pulled over and bent to display the object inside which now sat beside it. A glass crane. Not a crane made of glass that was chipped away and polished smooth. A crane made of folded glass pressed carefully as if it started as paper and turned to glass at the makers command. It was the size of a small bowl and heavy enough that it required both hands to lift.

A note inside read "How high is your sky if you only love it from the sea?" written in careful print with a blue fountain pen on handmade paper dotted with bits of seeds and petals. The crane and note sat on the table for days, untouched. Stay tried not to think about what it meant and who had left it for her.

Yet the crane beckoned her. She stroked the smooth folds and pressed her thumb upon the sharp beak. Her porcelain finger clicked gently against the thick, fragile, gleaming glass. The note now placed on the fridge with an old beaten magnet that showed up in the mail over a decade ago as an advertisement, and she set the crane on the kitchen window sill. It glowed with the light of the setting sun, splaying a rainbow across the floor and wall. Blue and green then purple and red.

Each day Stay went to her porch in hopes of finding another strange gift or cryptic letter. Hoping to find a reason or explanation left for the gift that meant so much to her that only her and her mother knew. Who else could possibly know about the cranes her mother folded? Was it coincidence? Could there be such a coincidence so large and meaningful left on her porch in an unmarked box?

Sitting at the table, tapping her fingers on the old grains staring at the crane glowing orange she wondered endlessly, losing hours and forgetting life. Was the crane pointing left? Didn't she put it up with the face pointing to the right? No, that couldn't be possible.

With a huff Stay sat up and began to pace the room. How dare some stranger give her a stupid letter with a crane she couldn't stop thinking about. The crane kept her up thinking of the dreams she had of it swimming on a frozen lake at night, cracking the ice in its wake until it broke off into a million pieces that reflected the sky. making it look like it was broken and the lake had stars. Then the crane became her mother standing on a slab of ice. She walked to the shore stepping onto the little pieces of frozen water, the dark water creeping and lapping over the white ice onto her mothers naked feet as she made her way to Stay.

© Ash Huntley

Cat Teeth

Cat teeth and a wolf claw, a skunk tail and assorted legs from raccoon, possums, and squirrels. Stay didn't have many bones on her mantel, but her collection grew nearly ever time she walked through the woods. They found her, in the form of a glint of yellow-white poking from brown leaves, a puff of fur nearby; sings she looked for. The only full skeleton she had were her porcupine bones, strung together and flying in front of a window. The rest lay random on the fire mantel, now with the fire silent beneath, in red and orange, mirroring autumn crawling through the windows, warming her naked toes.

The cat teeth were stacked in a small jar the size of her thumb. Molars, canines. Kitten and mature. Sharp and some with blood still clinging to the root. Ever so tiny, strong and capable. They seemed much too small to mean so much to such beasts.

Bones were strange, beautiful puzzle pieces to life. A thing most never saw while living, a beauty that only showed itself in the age of death. Stay wandered the woods and picked up the smooth bones among twigs and leaves. She marveled at the life they had, and at the energy returned the creatures returned to the world; except for that one bone.

Stay imagined assuming the role of Frankenstein. She would put the teeth on white linen, lined up in swooping rows, almost lost against the weave of the fabric. Stay watched in her minds eye as she cut her finger on a tiny tooth, the blood becoming the tooth's blood, the animal's life. The skunk bone would lye on the opposite end of the linen, ensuring a touch of the unknown, of wild mystery. Other beasts would bring her creature strength, stealth, and ferociousness.

Thumbing the bottle, stay gave it a small shake. The teeth jingled on the glass, music of life and death. A molar stock to the bottom of the cork top.

She would be no Frankenstein. She would never be able to care for an animal. Cleaning bones from the outside and dusting them, she could do. Feeding, loving and caring for a living creature other than herself, she could not.

Uncorking the jar, Stay pooled a few teeth onto her palm. How different some looked from others. Spikes and mini mountains, some with pits and others with ravines. There could be a whole minuscule world among these cat teeth. Oh, how Stay would love to live in such a world among calcified mountains.

Rivers would dig deep and trees would grow wide until they all connected, their branches grafted into one mutated web: a tree of life. The sky would turn green and the rain would be leaves. Milk flowers would grow beside the mountain and the river's water would be warm and pure from the tree's roots. This world would be free from disease. Stay imagined living in this world, alone, with no need nor desire to build separate shelter. To block out and hide away. Her bed would be moss, her cup would be bark, her shade would be the great tree of life.

Stay stretched her neck, it gave a lad pop. She had been looking so intently at the teeth in her hand a cramp had formed, snapping her out of the day dream. She carefully placed each tooth, one at a time, back into the jar.

© Ash Huntley

Rain

Stay corked the small vial containing a handful of raindrops. It would go on the shelf with a hundred other vials, some identical, others vastly different. Some were huge and others tiny, with only one drop inside. Each represented a different rain. If it rained for days continually, it would be just one vial. A vial for each unique storm or rain; something that came and went and could never return as it was in that moment.

Constant. Sometimes it was constant. Water falling from the sky in grey sheets, blurring everything in its nothingness. The world becoming out of focus, except for the rain. How could the sky hold so much water? Why were the clouds not falling down? Stay supposed that perhaps that was exactly what the clouds were doing - falling. The rain pours, thunders, smashes and pushing on the windows, demanding to be let in. Leaves swirl to the ground softly, without a sound, like a spring rain. When winter crawls through the drops, it howls and snaps at your heels, taunting.

Stay could live in the rain. She never felt uncomfortable or in danger from storms. No mater the ferocity. No matter the height of lightning nor the breadth of thunder, the rain was beautiful. Even if the strikes of lightning took away her lights inside, she could always use her oil lamps, hanging in abundance along the hallway walls. If the thunder shook her home with a deep crack and knocked something down, Stay wouldn't mind. She didn't mind when it shook a cobalt blue and ivory plate down, shattering it into a dozen little pieces. She made it into something even more beautiful than when it was whole. She drilled a hole into each piece, tied string to it and created a wind chime. Each storm after, the wind chime danced and trilled.

Storms make everything dull and grey, heavy and drooped. The life of the world naturally wanted to reach up and spread out. In the rain, nature told everything to hush, be quiet, calm down. Rain was forever nourishing. Water gave life to everything on Earth. It was smooth, clear and shiny. Small droplets or immense, forever spanning oceans. Stay wanted to see an ocean. A love affair between water and salt. It allowed fishes to glow in vibrant pinks and blues and for people to float happily along their beaches. The ocean was a place full of tears.

Stay once read about a pink see. Made pink from a certain algae that also gave the sea a high concentration of salt. It was the most buoyant place on earth. Pink waters, white sands, what a strange and wonderful place that would be to sleep in the waters.

Now, Stay sat on her porch step, a thin metal roof over hanging, keeping most of the rain off. She didn't mind getting wet though. Each time lighting flashed, Stay felt the smile on her face grow. There was no joy quite like watching lighting crawl through the sky. Like the roots or branches of a tree, or the veins of her body. the fundamentals of life lay in a storm: water and veins. The energy cracked with a force, blinding her, showing her home in a brilliant light, like a splash of day in a deep and dark night.

She didn't mind baths or showers, but she preferred to bath in the lake. It took her years after her mother's disappearance to bring herself to back in. When she did, the water lapped around her waist, coaxing her to go further. Her skin bumped in tiny dots as chills ran down her arms and spine. The sun slowly warmed her, told her it was ok. The lake was still, clear. Stay watched her toes wiggle into the clay, kicking up small bursts of clouds, and pebbles rolled away, tumbling on top of each other, tickling her feet.

Stay put her head underneath the surface and opened her eyes. It was like she had finally awakened. Finally understood. Her mother was not returning. Stay was alone, and that was ok. A fish swam by, skirting close to her hand.

When she resurfaced, it was raining. She had always loved rain. Stay and her mother used to dance in it, the used to wash their hair in the rivulets running down from the roof in great streams, like their own little waterfall. The sound would per her to sleep, when she finally manged to go to bed. Then, her first visit back to the lake, it had become something more. A sign. She was alone, yes, she was only as alone a creature could be, surrounded by the constant life that was earth.

The storm wasn't' different from any other, except it was its own. Stay corked the vial contain a handful of raindrops. The rotting leaves and moist earth intoxicated her, a smell so familiar it was like being washed away. The clear vial in the shape of a circle with a hole through the middle, like a donut, would join the other hundred vials of varying sizes, shapes and colors. Many were small bottles, some old test tubes. Most she found in the dirt, hiding like the bones on her mantel, or dredged from the lake. Brown and red apothecary jars, clear chipped test tubes and others she didn't know their past sues. The ones from the lake were her favorite. The lake spanned out further than her eyes could reach, she imagines those bottles and jars came from all over the world.

Still, many vials were bought online. She quickly ran out of her found pieces. Stay picked out bottles that spoke to her in some way. Whether unique or plan, she knew each one belonged to her when she found it, she knew the rain belonged to them.

© Ash Huntley

Snow

The snowflake lingered on Stay's outstretched hand. It didn't melt upon contact, turning into a regular drop of water to be collected in a minuscule vial and placed on her shelf of rain. It remained full and intact. A tiny, delicate cut of the world, a piece of shattered cloud fallen merrily to her hand. Stay had been outside in the snow for hours, cooling her hands for just this.

The icy design sat on a knuckle. The flake was a cathedral of ice, filled with spires and dancing light - a thing to pray to. another flake joined it, this one more rounded, with delicate cut-out pieces and swooping lines from point to point. The flakes faded. They could not last forever on her skin that insisted on being warm for short bursts of time.

No matter how long Stay stood outside, surrounded by sugared trees and bushes caked in ice, no mater where she stood, whether by the lake as it creaked under the pressure of heaps upon heaps of snow, luxurious and soft, or standing on the roof of her house, slick like an ice slide seducing her to her doom, she could not become or remain cold enough. She remained strong and steadfast, standing tall and sure either at the edge of the ice on the roof or at the lake. But neither place made a difference. Her blood would take the tiny sting, as the flakes landed, away. She would always enjoy it from afar, the snow, dusting the world in a haze of melted lines and cold calm.

Cold and calm. That is how the snow made Stay feel. She preferred the cold. To let the warmth from her blood leech out into the dry air like a wet huff, an exhalation of glorious remorse. She could stand, still as an ice sculpture, as the world pushed down from all sides.The cold took it all away, in a hush of white-noise. Every time it snowed she stepped out into it and it fell on her like a hug. A hug from a friend she always looked forward to seeing.

© Ash Huntley

Trees of Ice

Peculiar girl would have loved it outside today. She would have loved walking in the woods, the trees and every little bit of twigs and stuff covered in ice, like cystals, always with the impending danger of the weight of the ice causing giant branches and whole trees to snap with the force. At any second she could be crushed. There would be a thrill, for her, amidst the silent white of the icy world.

© Ash Huntley