Exploration

Using a 3rd person persona narrator, describe a place with passion and show a 
character(s) dealing with a dramatic situation.  Use lyrical language and a 
distant narration.

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	Barefeet slipped through the ankle-high, skin-scalding silt on the path
to the arroyo.  An almost missed storm had left a crackle-thin skin the night 
before, but it went unnoticed as it broke under the feet in the heat and sun of
this afternoon on the first of July.  The sky, dark blue edging to black, was 
marred by a tightly grouped formation of practicing Blue Angels, their 
contrails spreading to white lace in the sky.  They had been playing a 
silence-shattering, touch-and-go all morning.  The two dusty children intent 
on their task were oblivious to the scene.

	The path wound between the creosote bushes, replete with autumn-yellow 
leaves and soft-furred seeds, and the obstacles of dust-faded hedgehog cactus.
The grey shade of the acacia trees loomed ahead – a promise of relief from this
blistering heat. But the two didn’t hurry, their pace slow to match the beat of
the little girl’s song.  Her high-pitched voice broke in above the funeral-
dirge bagpipes of accompanying cicadas.  She sang of love and fur, of softness 
and loss.

	The ten-year-old towhead, a boy in cutoff jeans, strode solemnly beside
the little girl.  Her head was high, his face downcast.  In his right hand, he 
carried their mother’s old rusted garden spade with the short, broken off 
handle, in his left a small cross made from twine and the delicate, holed 
skeleton of a cholla.  The girl clutched a precious bundle to her chest.  The 
stiff, fur clad absence was wrapped in a worn, pink baby blanket with frayed, 
white satin binding.

Reaching the acacia and arroyo, the boy slid down the bank.  Expectantly, he 
looked up at her; she pointed.  He began digging through the cool, damp 
smelling earth.  Two buzzards attracted by a hint of decay circled overhead, 
their wings spread, gliding in a swirl of updrafts.  As the boy placed the 
bundle in the ground with reverence, tear tracks traced brown through the dust,
marking the cheeks of the little girl.  Her voice quavered in the soft, earth 
scented breeze. 

Kathleen Speck
07/18/09