Greetings fellow Steemians! Here is my 57th 5 minute freewrite. (Disclaimer: these usually take me more than 5 minutes to write). The prompt is "caterpillar". This is part II of a story that began here: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@bennettitalia/poison-a-fiction-smidgen-for-freewrite-210-tree.

Come check out the goings on at @freewritehouse! Many thanks to @mariannewest for hosting this wonderful daily freewrite :) https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-234-5-minute-freewrite-sunday-prompt-caterpillar

Tagging fans of part I here: @trumanity, @mariannewest, @suestevenson :)

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https://pixabay.com/en/tree-branches-sky-perspective-3257347/

Poison (Part II)

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When spring came I tore myself away. I freed myself from my mother.

It wasn't easy. I struggled. I pushed against her trunk, her roots, my arms and legs trembling with the effort. Most of my fibers were separated, bit by bit, from hers, but the strongest ones held, and soon I had to stop to catch my breath, my body tilted out from hers at an angle. Like a man leaning into a strong wind.

Breath. I was breathing like an animal. My chest pumped in and out, expanding and contracting, drawing the thick, cold, early spring air into my body and then pushing it out again. It tasted strange to my new senses. And so fast! Each inhale/exhale cycle lasted only seconds. I was used to it taking a whole day and night.

I could feel my head breathing as well, a different kind of breath, a long, slow one that seemed to go on forever. The dawning sunlight fell strangely there. It tingled. I reached up with my hands and felt the top of my head. It was covered with tiny buds, new spring leaves about to burst, just like my mother's only smaller. This felt familiar and comforting.

I twisted myself around to look at her. She was beautiful. There was a hole in her trunk where I had been, fibers ripped from it, sticking out in all directions, a few of the thicker ones still connected to me. My chest hurt, an ache so strong and sudden I thought I must be dying. I panicked, my mind racing. There must be a way to go back! A way to undo this...

Then my eyes fell upon the windowless building.

I stopped moving, stopped even breathing. I stared at it. My reason for being.

I turned back to my mother, twisting my body against the cords that still held me, savagely ripping myself free, fiber by agonizing fiber. When it was over I lay on the wet ground, feeling the frost melting under my back, gazing up into her branches. They moved gracefully in the light morning breeze, little green buds at the end of each twig. The one side, the side I had come from, was discolored and withered by its proximity to the poisoned creek, its branches stunted, twisted into strange patterns. The hole in her side reminded me of a chrysalis after the caterpillar has left it.

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©2018 Bennett Italia All Rights Reserved

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horizontal rulers courtesy @cryptosharon

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