Page 80 of Praying for Thunder

“Everlasting.”

“Go, Sable! Go!”

I needed to feel him. I needed to hear his voice. I needed to see that smile…

“Why don’t you ever ride Sable here so I can meet her?”

Sitting on the front steps of the church, the sun warming us in the winter, I rested my head on his shoulder. “I don’t want Daddy to track her trail. I don’t want anyone here when I’m with you.”

His cheek nudged my forehead, so I looked up to him beaming at me. “Kisses?”

But, no matter how much I prayed, no matter how many memories of his kindness comforted me, the closer I got to Thunder’s home, the more I could smell the damage.

It was powerful.

It was telling how nothing had survived.

“No!” I sobbed for the only second I’d give in to my doubt.

Clearing trees, seeing the house had been burnt to the ground, I kept telling myself there was hope. That he hadn’t gone down in flames. I told my breaking heart I was the fire he wouldn’t survive.

Skidding to a stop, I jumped off Sable, then ran to the house that no longer existed. “Thunder!”

Ashes… they were everywhere.

Except where there were… bones. “Thunder!”

I had hit my knees many times in my short life, but this was the first time I did and… cursed at Jesus. And I didn’t stop.

FOURTEEN

MOTHS TO FLAMES

Time… Does anyone truly understand it? How it can change things, drastically? Over time, flowing water can cut through rock. The same goes for others’ actions. They can break through strong hearts and have them lost and confused.

In a club ‘cage’, I was driven down State Road 74. Over a bridge, I stared out the backseat passenger window. The white clouds in the blue sky looked like mountains. It reminded me of the ones I had climbed to be in this very moment. I had to stay strong. I had to keep surviving. I had to keep a promise…

Touching the knife Dad had given me before I left, I thought of how it felt like a trade. He told me he was trusting me, giving me my own weapon. But also said I had to tell Rya goodbye.

In that car, my throat threatened to close. I groaned, “Chubs, faster. Please.”

The blade was a confirmation of every future mountain I still had to climb.

Was I strong enough?

From the front passenger seat, Roamer stared at me. “I hope she’s worth all this. You look awful.”

I felt awful. I felt ill. Nothing was making sense. Dio had loved Ani and lost her. I loved Rya, and was, seemingly, doomed to the same fate.

I pulled at the new shirt that now felt like was strangling me. “I don’t know how to do what Onus has asked me to do. I can’t survive in only darkness.”

My words didn’t exactly sound like a fourteen-year-old was speaking, but I was no ordinary fourteen-year-old. I just didn’t know it yet.

Finally racing down the familiar road, I bounced in the backseat as Chubs took the holes in the dirt with no caution.

“Damn,” uttered Roamer.

Pulling up to Grandma’s burnt home, it was eerie. I didn’t want to look too closely for fear I would see leftover bones, but there weren’t any. Only yellow flowers at the front door that no longer existed.