1. Beneath the Sister Tree (Creative Writing Portfolio)

The rocks beneath my bare feet cut and tore into my flesh, the blood that oozed staining each jagged point of stone. The haze of ash danced through the air, tickling the inside of my nose, suffocating my lungs. Small flakes of flames cut through my hair, down to the flesh. But the pain beneath my feet turned my mind away from the burning across my back. The sky above me, raining fire and debris, made my insides shiver in fear.

The only thoughts that I dared to allow in my head, were of the last words he had spoken to me just before we had been separated by the crowd of panic. Find the sister trees. The ones where we use to play as kids. I knew exactly where they were, but the amount of rubble that littered the earth obscured my sense of direction. My left looked like my right, and the north looked like the south. All I could do was pray that I was going the right way, and pray that he would be there waiting for me when I succeeded in finding my way.

The curtain of ash seemed to settle, the air becoming more crystal than mud. My heart began to beat at the sight of the two single trees that once stood curving in towards each other, leaning their foreheads against the other. One sister still stood strong, but her partner was no longer the same. It’s broken branches and snapped trunk gave off a look of defeat and helplessness. Beneath them, a slender shadow loomed, making my feet move quicker than ever before.

He was there. He had made it. We were safe.

As my legs brought me closer, the cinders that masked the shadow cleared out, and all that remained was the burnt and fallen remains of the old glider that once hung from the tree for everyone and anyone to feel like they were flying in.

He wasn’t there. He hadn’t made it. The dreams of safety was merely that: a dream.

Beneath the sister trees, I wiped away the ash and dust of debris and settled my back against the slender trunk of the single sister that still stood. From the second he had been separated from me, I knew that would be the last time I ever saw him. The kiss he placed against my cheek would forever remain a memory of goodbye. The ring upon my finger would haunt me day in and day out. Nothing would ever be the same; not the trees that once lined our neighborhood streets, not the buildings that once stood along Old Main Street, and never again the heart that still beat within me.

Or him.

Every word he whispered to me in the sweet, dusky night would play in the back of my mind, making me think that he was still here. Next to me. Calling my name. Just as I thought I heard now. Every snap or crackle around me sounded like him.

Then I heard it again.

Scrambling to my feet, I searched around me, my burning eyes squinting through the ash that still drifted through the air. Then, there it was. A tall, slender shadow that could be anything. But, this time, I knew it wasn’t just anything.

It was him.