update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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@ -249,6 +249,20 @@ When bear stepped clear of bear
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<p>But still, they had got to earn their keep, hadn’t they? That’s what Sim said, would say at the drop of a hat, at the drop of a haul, every time they hopped in the van after a heist or holdup. He’d promise her late at night, and maybe he’d even call out to her across a gas station or over the hood of some poor sop’s car as the fox or cat or whatever shrieked and threw coins at her feet and recoiled in terror.</p>
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<p>So Ursula kept up her routine, doing her runs in the morning and hauling some rocks around here and there just to keep those shoulders from getting too soft and brushing her fur out in the evenings. Still crunching on those carrots we all know she loves and buying cans of beets to go with the chuck so she can cook up a proper stew on the tailgate of the van just past the end of their mattress so that. Still letting Sim push her down onto that mattress after every job, cause we all know the ferret’s gotta jump every opportunity he gets, and maybe she makes a sound or maybe not, cause we also know how taciturn our Ursula is, quiet to her core, and we’ll never know her thoughts as he hunches and curls above her because Sim hasn’t the time to listen after making, he promises himself, love to her, he’s too busy jumping.</p>
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<p>All we know, all we know of course, all poor Sim knows is that our Ursula’s heart beats faster.</p>
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<p>Sim, too busy jumping, never kept the batteries in the flashlight charged, though, so it’s a damn weak light that bobs and bounces its way up the dirt trail from where they’d made their camp however many days or weeks or months later, that camp an hour or so outside of Sawtooth, and it’s not from dancing now. Someone down in town told him they’d seen Ursula heading up into the mountains. Someone there said the bear’d been wandering a fair piece away from where they were camped.</p>
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<p>Not dancing, no, our poor Sim is troubled, we can guess, by the way he stomps and skitters, first one then t’other, cause he was afraid of the Rockies, up where the air gets clean and bright in the nose and the trees practically shine and there’s certainly no hauls to be had or plans to be made. Afraid, perhaps, though we can guess one so used to jumping would never say so.</p>
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<p>Also afraid of what folks down in town would say, seeing that big oaf tramping up through the trees. Afraid, perhaps, of what that’d do to their safety if they were to keep making their keep.</p>
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<p>“Big dummy, trespassing up these hills, I’m sure this is someone’s land,” he says to that dim circle of light on the ground and to the moon up high. Imagine a big girl like her need to go for a nature hike, taking those big-ass feet of hers to bury them in pine needles or — hah! — bearberry. Imagine needing to take a vacation from bein’ stronger’n I’ll ever be. Imagine needing to take a break from having a life so easy as the one I bought for her.</p>
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<p>“Just you wait–” Though who this ‘you’ Sim imagines is we’ll likely never know, maybe that very same moon. “Just you wait. She’ll be coming back looking all peaceful and full of the light of the moon or maybe she’s up there meditating on a rock like some golden Buddha you see in all those shows I’m sure she likes. Just you wait, she’ll come back with a big dumb grin on that blank face of hers, and I’ll jump up and say, “You been rolling around in needles again, girlie? You been out there having a romp with the deer? You climbing trees and howling at the moon?” And I’ll say, “You look a fool like that, pine-cones in your ears. You look a total fool thinkin’ all your peace is bound up in quiet and not in the life I’m buying.”“</p>
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<p>But far out, far out by now, Ursula ran. She plowed through the trees because she would not stop, could not stop, could not hope to stop. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be, she left a wake through the carpet of needles.</p>
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<p>She ran until the trees ran out and she had to make a wake through stone and shale, through pebbles and snow, and our Ursula keep on running. She ran until the mountain beneath her feet ran out and the earth yawned open beneath her and all she had to make waves in was stars and the clean black of the night.</p>
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<p>And her arms fell away in a flourish of a bow, spread in genteel a curtsey to no one but the moon, and these too became stars, they became stars of brightest white because what better color could a star ever hope to be? Stars to wrap around the moon.</p>
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<p>And her legs fell away like a garment long past its prime, like those overalls that fit just so, the one she’d been mending years and years now, darning by camp stove and headlight in plain in the light of day. They fell away and burned into that crisp brightness, standing stark against the fabric of the night. They burned as bright as her arms, for every rock Ursula hauled or head she knocked, surely she’d ran a mile.</p>
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<p>And she shed the mantle of the weight of the world, letting her shoulders fall off as easy as could be, as easy as Sim dancing in the lights of the van that night out in the foothills. Shoulders falling away as easy as it was to jump.</p>
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<p>And thus let her belly fall away like an apron full of boulders, that ever-soft curve no longer held taut to keep Sim from poking fun at it as he fucked her, hunching and curling above her pretending like she was with child. Those boulders, too, they became stars in the sky, burning as bright as anything.</p>
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<p>And at long last she was able to reach up to the moon, reach up to the moon that one last time and give the face held within a kiss, leaving behind a twinkle of her eye, one last star to show her love for the night and for the good clean earth below.</p>
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<p>Nothing left of our Ursula but her yearning shadow cast upon the ground as the moon rose ever higher and Sim cussed his cusses and the lights of the town twinkled below, and all we can do is hope that at last she gets to bury her feet in good clean earth and sow her carrots and beets, and if ever someone hunches and curls above her in labor or in need or in pain or in joy, all we can do is that it will be out of more than a promise of love.</p>
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<p>Nothing left but a yearning shadow and those stars, cause some folks are just built to jump, but some were born to shine.</p>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-06-08</p>
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