"How do I get myself into these things?" I muttered, swiping at a stray red hair that was refusing to be confined in the braids that hung down from both sides of my head. Why my carver had insisted on giving me a loose strand of hair I will never understand. Thankfully, there was no mirror around to see myself in. If there had been I'm certain I would have seen the mud I could feel drying on both cheeks, right where the dreaded freckles liked to cluster, and if I wasn't mistaken there was ore mud on my forehead.
'Oh, well, at least it covers my freckles'. I shrugged my shoulders and turned my attention from my own miseries and the raging storm to the dilapidated cabin that had been the only shelter I could find when the rain had started. Having long since been abandoned, probably left behind by one of the early settlers that had once made their home here, it sat smack in the middle of Pioneer Forest.
It was small, only one room, with gaps in the walls, the chinking having long since crumbled away so that light and rain came in between the logs. In the dreary bit of daylight that was finding its way inside I could not see into all the corners but could, thankfully, just make out the main parts of the cabin.
It was empty except for a few stray bits of old cloth, a couple of tin cans sitting on a shelf that looked like it might fall off the wall at any minute, and an old rocking chair that was missing one entire side.
The chair was laying on its broken side next to the only window in the little cabin. From where I sat it looked to me like that poor chair had once been placed there so whoever sat in it could watch out the window while they rocked but it had now been there so long that it had rotted to the point of collapse, falling in front of that dirty, soot covered, broken window.
It might have once been a homey cabin, inviting all that entered to sit a spell. Maybe it had belonged to an old man that liked to trap and fish, or a grandma that would sit at that window, rocking babies and telling stories, or perhaps it had belonged to a young couple and had been packed to the rafters with kids. Whoever had once lived here had long since moved on to other things, leaving behind a cabin that could attest to the lives they once lived here in these woods.
Now the only thing homey about it was the small fire in the fireplace, made from sticks and other debris that had been on the cabin floor and my rumpled dress draped over a rung in the back of the chair.
The tattered little scrap of a quilt would have been warm and welcoming had it not smelled so bad. At least it kept me covered while my dress dried and helped to ward off the chill in the cabin.
A loud clap of thunder made me nearly jump from my skin and reminded me of the storm around me. Fires and storms were not good things to be in when you were but a doll of six and a quarter inches tall. The woman that carved me had told me over and over again to avoid both water and fire but had I listened? No.
And look where it got me. In trouble. Again.
I had been told lots of things during those days when I had stayed safe in the wood shop being ever so slowly carved from a hunk of boring old firewood into a doll. Listening to my carver as she shaved bits of wood away, one small stroke at a time, I had come to the understanding that dolls were boring. We were meant for the sole purpose of our owners entertainment. To sit on a shelf and look pretty until my person decided to take me down and dress me up. I was lucky, she had said, if my owner would let me travel along with her and pose me for pictures in front of some place or the other that we might visit.
Hah.
How little these people, both my carver and my new owner, knew. Dolls might have been meant to be playthings for people but was the most boring life I could imagine. There was no way I was going to sit around and wait on some person to decide to come play with me. There was too much to see, too much to do.
Which is exactly what got me into trouble, I reminded myself
Take this horrible storm, I had simply grown tired of sitting on the shelf in the living room where my new owner had placed me just yesterday, after removing me from the box I had traveled through the mail in, a dark, stuffy experience that had been the result of my explorations in the wood shop. It was an experience I did not care to repeat.
After I was removed from that horrible little box, I had been oohed and ahhed over, changed into a 'pretty little dress' that was 'just right for Christmas' because it had little candy canes on a black background, given the most dreadful name of Tatiana, which had quickly been shortened to Tatty, a name that was much more to my liking. I had been told the history behind Pioneer Forest, which was to be my new home, and placed on a shelf next to the other little dolly's.
I suppose I had been expected to stay there, to stand on that shelf, all prettied up and waiting for what, I did not know, but I had quickly grown tired of standing there and had escaped by climbing down the shelf, using the books and other things on the lower shelves to make my escape.
At least that had been my intention and it had been what I was doing until I had lost my grip and tumbled to the floor. A bit shook up from the hard landing, I had slipped out the front door and wandered off into the woods where I had been happily studying fallen leaves when this storm had come upon me.
Now here I sat before a fire that I'm sure people would laugh at the size of, wet to the strings that held my arms and head securely on my body, and smeared in mud.
This most definitely wasn't boring but I'm not sure I didn't envy those other dolls that were still sitting safe and dry on the shelf.
I stuck another log on the fire. Sparks shot into the air in a pretty little show that was over all too soon., Heat warmed my face and seeped through the quilt.
A loud noise, like the train that had rumbled past my carvers home, filled the little cabin. The walls shook. The broken window rattled. The stone floor of the fireplace felt as though it was coming alive beneath me. Something slammed into the side of the cabin. The tin roof threatened to blow away, pulling away from the cabin at the corners. Thunder rumbled and grumbled till it gave way to great claps. Lightning flashed, filling the cabin with bursts of bright lights that came and went in a steady flashing that never ended.
I hunkered down, wishing I had stayed on my shelf. Hail beat the little cabin till I was certain what there was of it would come crashing down around me. Pressure built, squeezing me till my ears popped. And still the train rumbled on.
Only I had seen no train tracks in the woods.
I struggled to find and explanation for this worsening of the storm. I could think of only one thing that might explain it but that made no sense. Tornadoes did not happen the day before Christmas. I had been told tornadoes came in the spring but that had been at my home in Oklahoma where I had been carved. This was Louisiana.
And there were no tornadoes in Louisiana.
Were there?
Were there?
To be continued.....
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