In many ways, she resembled her grandmother. They shared angled cheekbones and dark mahogany hair, and both had long sticks for fingers. Her grandmother’s fingers, however, were stained with age and covered with wrinkles. Her grandmother’s copper skin was adorned with freckles; some large and some rather small. But, unlike her grandmother, she never knew this land. She had grown up in another place, captured in another world. She lacked the knowledge of how certain scents would foretell weather patterns. She lacked the intimacy with the tiniest honey bee or with the largest sycamore. She lacked the love for the world that seemed to overtake her grandmother.
As she stood in the shade of the forest, she watched the sunlight gallop through the leaves. She wondered what her grandmother was like when her grandmother was her age. Could she easily walk through the forest barefoot? Ready to prove herself, she untied her sneakers. The fallen leaves crackled under her bony feet as she winced with every step. Her mind drifted away from her grandmother and the rhythmic sunlight; all she could picture was the safety of her sneakers. And with her mind focused on the thing she wished to escape, she knew she was not her grandmother.
She was embarrassed for her weak body, that could not take a walk on this familiar floor. Hoping to prove herself, she wandered along, mindful the life around her. A buzzing hive of the tiniest honey bees whizzed around the top of a tall sycamore tree. She stopped and carefully admired their busy work. Constantly moving with such passion, the bees were intrinsically good, she thought. Despite the usual hatred for such a creature, she saw their gentle work and intelligent motions. She began to contemplate why they were hated so until one stubborn bee stung her on the arm. Gasping with shock, she looked at the bee, that plummeted to its death on the fallen leaves. She was an alien in this place that formed her grandmother.
Walking out of the shaded shrubbery, her hair caught a chilled breeze. Maybe she looked like her grandmother, but something was different. In the nighttime, she was enclosed inside her grandmother’s worn house, but the coldness kept her awake. Outside the tainted window, she could see a figure marching in the distance, against the bitter wind that roared between the trees. How could someone be out, when it was so cold and so dark? As she thought of the absurdness of such a venture at this hour, she flew out of the bed and reached for her grandmother’s worn fur coat. For she knew who was outside.