*AUTHOR’S NOTE: This isn’t so much a regular story as much as a word of encouragement. Inspired by Megan Cox’s art.* Here she stands, at the threshold of something new. Is it the right thing to do? Should she go on into the unknown? Or turn back to the familiar and hated? All that she has lived with for the last twelve years is terrifying, yet she finds a strange comfort in it. He loves her, doesn’t he? And her children? He bothered to try and stop them at the airport! Doesn’t that mean anything? Or is it just fear? Fear from him that he’ll lose his victim, and fear from her that he’ll hate her if she leaves. A small spark appears in her heart. She stares at it in surprise. If she leaves him, won’t that be a sacrilege? To God, herself, the church, and her husband? He’d told her that the Bible told them that divorce, and disobedience to your husband, and anything of that manner is evil. Did it really? Was the God that she loved that cruel? The God who shows her an amazing kind of love, the kind that her husband has never shown or been able to show. The spark is fanned into a little flame. Embers appear around it in concentric circles. Those circles look a lot like a ring. A marriage ring, in fact. The sort of thing that he’d never even bothered to acknowledge the need of. Oh, yes, he’d eventually gotten her one. Six years into the slavery. Why couldn’t he even love her enough to give her this small thing, that every other woman she knows has? The sole good thing that has come from this wedlock has been her children, the most precious thing in the world to her. She loves them with all her heart. Does her husband? Of course not. He tore her son down from the bunkbed which is his only refuge by the ankle only a few days ago. The flame grows into a small fire. The embers spread, in their circling patterns, until lines connect and begin to make a sort of drawing. She watches with dettached interest as she continues to ponder this decision ahead of her. If she stays any longer, her children may be hurt. Her with them! What if he corrupts them fully, turning them into extensions of himself? That would kill her! To see them like him, twisted, unable to love, broken on the inside and yet determined to break others . . . The fire flares up, becoming a powerful wildfire at the thought. Maybe she could endure it if it were herself being damaged further, but she would rather be damned to hell than see her children in that position! How dare he come near them! Oh, yes, he may love them, but in a sickening way: only insofar as they were a part of him! Now she looks closer at the fire. Her eyes widen as she sees the inferno threatening to consume her heart. She is already walking away from her old life, her children at her side. She can’t let the fire take them too! Like a cold stream of water, words from her Lord slip into her mind. I love you. You are worth it. You are special. You are beautiful. So are your children. I love you. She watches the fire recede, letting her see what the circling patterns of ashes and embers were drawing. It is a lion, rearing its head back into a fierce roar. In front of it is a dragon, its snaking form moving swiftly towards something at the lion’s feet, but still looking small beside the powerful animal. She looks closer at what is at the lion’s paws. It is a little sheep, surrounded by four smaller lambs. Her. And her own little lambs. Heart of Fire, Megan D. Cox (Little Meg Studios)
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AuthorI love fiction, fantasy, roleplaying, and reading. Nice to meet you too. All of my tales are little kid-friendly, except perhaps a few stories in the Rogue Captain universe. Those are more geared towards teens. Check with your parents, just in case. Archives
August 2019
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