Family

I vaguely remember three hundred years ago. I am an idea, lying under Mother’s shade with my siblings. We sleep through Winter’s snow blanket. In Spring melt we, small brown pigs, wake to root in pungent humus. Breeze touches us all Summer until our greenery leaves in Autumn.

Mother is ravaged by loggers; her stump becomes barnacled with fungi. We rise to shadow her remains.

It is only now, in our final years, that we understand; the barnacles retrieve our memories, each one helping us remember who we were as we transform. As our children watch in our shade.

[99 words]

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields is the host of Friday Fictioneers.