Words on Wednesday ~ 8/4

This month, [David M Gascoigne] is providing the prompts for Words for Wednesday, but they are being hosted on [the Elephant's Child blog]. Started by Delores ages ago, it is now hosted by different people each month on various blogs around the world. The aim of Words for Wednesday is to encourage us to write using some or all of the prompts.

~*~*~

  She wore her courage as if it was a peacock's plumage.  On most days, she appeared sleek, and in control.  Tail feathers and colors down, going through each day as if nothing was wrong.  As if cancer was a word that only happened to other people.  Not her.

  But when her phone rang and the caller ID indicated it was one of her doctors, her courage and tail feathers flashed.  As if to warn that word that she was not willing to hear it.  Not willing to give in to the fear of it.

  She had grown up in a peripatetic childhood.  Such was the life of a military family.  It made it hard to develop close friendships, and the ones that she had, were built upon the backs of the postal carriers.  Harder still was her connections to extended family, and there were times when she watched from a distance the closeness of her cousins with a slight pang of agony at what she had missed out on.

  Her divorce and move to another state had given her a bit more permissive desire to make friends and reconnect with family.  Even before her body had turned against her.  Even before she had reached out on social media to ask that they pray for her.  Still, she sometimes felt it was her duty to silently face the battles before her.  Unwilling to open herself to the rejection and judgment she had experienced in the past by "friends."

  Life had once been colorful before *he* turned it dark.  She'd had friends, and her townhouse was more of a townhome, filled with laughter and comfort.  Without even knowing, she had created a hygge home where neighbors, friends, and even stray dogs felt safe to approach her when they needed solace.  The darkness was absent, cast out by the lightness of her heart.  She listened with some mastery to not just what was said to her, but what her empathic soul was telling her.

  *He* came to prey on her kindness.  But in spite of his darkness, she walked away, with the beauty of an orchid.