Saturday, October 29, 2016

Isolation by R.E.Goodrich

On a dreary, cold October while I watched the leaves descending,
twirling orange, red, and golden from the trees,
my frame of mind, it dourly echoed the depressing song of autumn, 
for my life had turned as dull and dry as leaves.

I slipped on a woolen sweater, though a coat may have been better
to protect my skin from harsh and chilly winds. 
It was not my first concern to contemplate external comfort
when my heart and soul were agonized within.

Nay, I don’t recall the day when joy began to fade to nothing,
turning every hour a somber shade of gray. 
Drawn out weeks I spent alone while urgent business called you elsewhere,
keeping both your mind and body far at bay.

It was never my intention to reside apart from others,
but the woods’ enchanting mood had won our hearts.
I remember how romantic it had seemed to build a cottage
in the trees for you and me to make a start.

Nonetheless, when life demands it, love and fantasy erode
until the push to make a dollar turns to greed.
And so you spent more time without me, crafting deals and making money,
never meaning to neglect my greater needs.

Oh, it was a slow descent that over time brought me to madness.
Years before, my heart did love you evermore,
knowing hours away were only meant to ease our mortal burdens,
so with eagerness I’d meet you at the door.

Day by day you lingered longer in the caves of money changers.
Night by night your presence failed to warm my bed.
But oh!  The times you did appear with pretty gifts and warm affections,
not one small complaint or griping word was said.

Perhaps that was my err.  I should have voiced how dreadful lonely
and depressing isolation was for me.
So stale and stagnant fell my solitude that time and time again
I tried to coax intruding squirrels to sit for tea.

Sipping chamomile while nibbling almond crumpets, I would
hear a spotted owl that answered every noise with “who?”
And for weeks my desperation found the owl a fine companion
‘til I realized we were “whooing” out for you.




















It was on this dark and starry night I first set out to wander
far beyond our property into the woods.
And despite the nippy weather, with a sweater wrapped around me,
I determined to hike on as best I could.

An enchanting moon shone luminous upon my virgin path,
highlighting every step into the yet unknown.
I traveled on with neither destination nor a goal in mind
except to walk the aching sorrow from my bones.

‘Midst the timbers I did travel, scrunching underbrush and mushrooms,
being careful of dead branches on my way. 
Moss and pine assailed my nose while I was much opposed to stepping
foot in mucky piles of weather and decay.

It was in an open circle, very small but boasting daisies
and white asters growing wild among the grass,
well-illuminated also by a moon so full and glowing
it appeared to be a lid of giant mass.

Though the night was getting colder, it was like the sun had risen.
I absorbed a ray of warmth that wasn’t real.
Nonetheless, my skin behaved as if the hotness of the day
was being mirrored by the moon for me to feel.

With my face turned up to heaven, eyelids closed against the moonlight,
I stepped slowly to the circle’s very heart.
There my foot bumped into something far more supple than a boulder.
When I looked, the image gave my fright a start.

For a moment I stood frozen, hardly breathing in the evening,
hoping what my eyes beheld would cease to be.
But the body, white as ivory, lying still within the grasses
neither vanished nor attempted aught to flee.

Just a gasp at length I managed, for a scream seemed rather pointless
in the middle of the forest in the night.
With wide eyes I scanned the body, more than certain it was lifeless,
seeking evidence of how she met her plight.

A young woman, maybe twenty, seemed to sleep among the flowers,
blooms so white and wild around her pretty dress.
I could see no sign of mischief, not a wound or laceration.
By my scrutiny she seemed in no distress.

Then I noticed in her fingers lay a vial.  It was empty.
I could picture how in life this troubled soul
had destroyed herself through poison in a bleak, crestfallen moment,
having nobody and nowhere else to go.

Oh alas!  How bitter sorry I did feel for this sweet maiden,
empathizing with what mystery was her pain.
The enormity of anguish must have been an awful burden
to convince her every hour was lived in vain.

As I shed a tear or two, my fingers touched the cold cadaver
and the strangest shiver traveled up my spine.
At my back, I felt a chill that far surpassed the curious warmness
I’d encountered stepping through the ring of pines.

The impression of a presence made me glimpse across my shoulder
where I spied a being ethereal and fair.
The ghost was no illusion but a shadow of the maiden
lying at my feet, devoid of mortal cares.

For a brief eternal moment I believed my life in danger,
but that notion faded with a simple smile.
The young spirit kept her distance as she studied me in wonder,
lost in mutual contemplation for a while.

Then she spoke, her visage beaming, and she seemed a friendly specter,
overjoyed to come across a living soul.
And despite her eerie aura, I could honestly admit
her mere existence did my loneliness console.

“Speak your name,” said she in eagerness.  I did without delay.
She told me hers, at which we shared a pensive sigh.
Placing both feet on the grass, she stepped beside me near her body.
Pointing to the vial, I softly uttered, “Why?”

In a dull and solemn murmur she replied, “What’s done is done.”
And then she turned away, refusing more to tell.
As her ghostly form moved off to wander weightless o’er the grasses,
my gaze lingered longer on her lifeless shell.

Then, as if she were a child, I heard her say, “Come play with me.
It’s been so very long since I have had a friend.”
I turned to find her two eyes hopeful, glowing near as white as starlight,
with a longingness my heart could apprehend.

I too was greatly hungering to make a new acquaintance,
craving personal companionship once more.
So I shed my woolen sweater, amply warmed by mystic moonlight,
to engage in dance and singing tales of lore.

In the morning I awakened ‘mid the mossy ring of pine trees
with my sweater draped across my shivering arms.
I had almost deemed the evening but a figment of my dreaming
when I spied the ashen corpse with some alarm.

Casting glances ‘bout the meadow where the air had felt like summer
up until a timely autumnal sunrise,
I was highly disappointed not to spot the pretty specter who
had capably my sorrows minimized.

Determining it wise to leave the body where it rested,
I stepped back into the trees to head for home.
Momentarily, I paused to scan the circle for a sign
that night had not elapsed with me out here alone.

Seeing nothing in the daylight, I moved off somewhat bewildered.
I could not erase the maiden from my mind.
It was crazy to feel grief o’er an imagined apparition,
yet I could not leave her memory behind.

Had I fantasized this friendly specter out of desperation?
Had the solitude and quiet made me mad?
Or, rather, had the most delightful night I’d spent in ages
been a pleasure for one living and one dead?

Wrestling sanity amid these thoughts, I drifted off in slumber,
waking just as sunset turned the sky maroon.
I pulled on my woolen sweater and ducked out into the forest,
keen to reach the meadow heated by the moon.

When I passed between the pine trees, smelling moss upon the branches,
I glanced everywhere with highest hopes indeed.
At the feel of drenching warmth my eyelids closed to face the moonlight.
Then I felt a shiver, followed by a plea.

“Please come play with me.”  A soft request that covered me in goose bumps.
When my eyelids flickered open, I grinned wide.
“I would love to play,” I answered to the same incorporeal being
whose mortality had ceased in suicide.

I scarcely can express the great relief I felt to know
I wasn’t half as mad as I had first assumed.
And throughout the moonlit evening we did laugh instead of grieving.
In my heart a bud of optimism bloomed.

Daylight hours I used for sleeping while each precious night I rushed
To find my ghostly sister waiting patiently.
The moon above remained a nightlight warming up our magic circle
where the wild asters grew tenaciously.

One wet and drizzly afternoon while fast asleep in bed
I felt a large and gentle hand against my cheek.
My mattress shifted at the weight of someone sizeable and heavy,
and I heard a man inquire if I was weak.

“You look pale, my dearest.  Are you ill?  Your skin’s in need of sun.”
I felt big fingers cup my face as I awoke.
And for a moment it was if I had an onset of amnesia
‘til I recognized my husband, and I spoke.

“It is you!” I cried. “My darling, you’ve returned to me at last!”
He hugged me tight, and in his ear I breathed a sigh.
“How I’ve missed you!”  “Oh, I’ve missed you too, but sadly I can’t stay.”
A cold remark to which I gravely uttered, “Why?”

“There’s important work to do, my love.  Please try to understand.
It is our future for which business doth provide.
But I promise I shall not be long.  One week and I’ll return.”
He smiled softly while my tears I blinked aside.

He then showered me in gifts, so I put on a glad expression
and accepted dainty trinkets and a ring.
I was grateful for the night we shared exchanging warm affections,
but by morning he was flittering his wings.

“Must you fly from me so soon?” I asked, already feeling lonesome.
“You could sit a spell and share a pot of tea.”
With a hand upon my cheek he pacified me with a kiss.
“I’m sorry, dearest, but I’ll be home soon—you’ll see.”

Now, before I said goodbye I made him swear to backtrack quickly.
He assured me it was just a few more days.
“I’ll be standing on our doorstep by this very hour next weekend.
Hear my promise; I shall rush and not delay.”

Late that evening I revisited the moonlit grassy meadow.
There I found the ghostly maiden shedding tears.
Strands of haze were misted sorrow that fell o’er her empty body;
She was mourning loss of life, so it appeared.

I rushed over, arms outstretched as if to offer an embrace,
but when I reached the girl my hands dropped to my thighs.
A dismal exhale crossed my lips; my features twisted with compassion.
No one spoke until the mourner raised her eyes.

I was shocked when she proceeded to recount her day of death
by first confessing that a man had won her heart.
They had proved their love in secret when society forbade them,
though in open view they spent their time apart.

Months elapsed and turned to years while their love blossomed undiscovered,
yet they yearned for more than meetings in the dark.
But alas!  The unforgiving world denied them any refuge.
To the afterlife they both vowed to embark.

It was here inside this same secluded circle they met up
to swear their love to one another evermore.
If the world refused a nuptial kiss for man and wife to wed,
the pitying angels would hold open heaven’s door.

Beneath a harvest moon they spent their last devoted hours,
resolute to make the final sacrifice.
Star-crossed lovers held up vials as they toasted their affections.
To their lips they put the poison and imbibed.

But that wasn’t true. Her sweetheart hesitated as she swallowed.
Not a drop of poison touched the craven’s tongue.
First confusion, then betrayal, lastly fear sunk in to haunt her
knowing there was no reversing what she’d done.

She collapsed and breathed her final dying breath among the daisies
while her living lover muttered deep regrets.
He scurried off, a single kiss upon her icy hand in parting—
wanton cowardice she never would forget.

She remained night after night beside her still and frigid body,
where the moon’s full eye had witnessed bitter woe.
And there she meant to haunt the woods until his passing made things right,
for she had nobody and nowhere else to go.

A well of tears I shed at hearing her disastrous tale of heartbreak,
and upon its end she questioned where I’d been.
Disappointing her the prior night had caused a valid worry
that, just like her love, I’d ne’er return again.

I apologized and then began the tale of my own sorrows,
how essentially I lived each day forlorn.
Though I loved my husband dearly and I longed to have him near,
his frequent travels meant he scarcely stayed at home.

We connected much like sisters and divulged a wealth of secrets.
In our misery, we howled up at the moon.
For the first time in my life I felt both understood and pitied.
It was hard to part when morning came so soon.

Daylight hours I slept away until the moon became my sunshine.
After dusk, I basked in treasured company,
until one windy autumn night a whispered wish disturbed my thoughts;
my ghostly sister bid eternity with me.

She said there was yet another vial of poison, left untouched.
Her fleeing lover had abandoned it in haste.
She suggested that if someone sought to reach the world beyond
the vial’s contents would require but a taste.

I’ll admit at first the notion was distressing to my mind.
“I have a husband and a home and seeds to sow!” 
My spirit sister forced a smile.  “And so you shall… at least a while.
Though eventually all treasures you’ll forgo.”

I understood her subtle meaning: now or later ends the same.
But giving up my now seemed wasteful and unwise.
“You forget what you’d be gaining—an eternity together.
What you’d lose are lonely days that you despise.”

At the leading rays of sunrise, I proceeded toward my home.
It was impossible to sleep a wink that day. 
Call it madness.  Call it reason from an otherworld perspective.
The allure to join my friend had taken sway.

She was there for me.  A ghost!  Not now and then but every evening.
While the flesh-and-blood I’d married, he was gone.
Though he’d promised one week prior to return at dawning light,
my sole companion was an owl the whole day long.

Pulled apart by clashing wants, I chose to stay the night at home
and pray my husband would arrive before the dew.
I yearned to speak to him of love and verify his heart’s desire,
but the only voice I heard kept crying, “Who!”

So I contemplated hour by hour that one repeated word,
and in the morning I continued wide awake.
As the owl and I “whooed” out for you, my tears turned to a river.
And the sun, he traveled slowly for my sake.

And I waited. 
Oh, I waited!  ‘til the sky turned red with envy!
But you didn’t come to beg me stay with you.
Hence, my darling, where one lay now there are two.

― Richelle E. Goodrich


Copyright 2016 Richelle E. Goodrich

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Being Thoughtful Anyway

     This morning I drove my son to the high school at 5:30am for a choir field trip. He was dressed up and looking very nice, as were all his fellow students.
     As we pulled up along the sidewalk bordering the school, the first thing we and most others noticed was a large, heavy garbage can that had been filled with trash. It was now tipped over, its contents dumped on the ground by some thoughtless soul. I watched a number of individuals steer around the garbage in order to get to the waiting buses. I imagined their thoughts were similar to the following:
     What jerks! Now someone else is going to have to clean up this mess! It is not my job; I am all dressed up. I do not want to get dirty. And I didn't do it. There is someone who gets paid to clean the campus. How disgusting.
     I made a comment to my son as he stepped out of the car with his bag that I wish the world were more thoughtful. Then I told him goodbye and to have a nice trip.
     There are moments in life when your kids upset you to the point of tears. And there are moments when they make your heart swell with admiration to the point of tears.

 

     I watched my son walk over to the pile of trash and stop to look at it. Most of it consisted of leftover food and paper packaging. He put his bag on the ground and spoke to the next student to approach who was dressed in a white shirt and tie. The young man set down his gear and proceeded to help my son set the garbage can upright. Then I watched these young men go the extra mile and pick up every last disgusting piece of leftover food and soggy trash to deposit it back into the garbage can in which it belonged. A third student stopped to stand over them, watching. Then a parent emerged from her car with hand sanitizer and wipes for these young men. They proceeded to get on the bus when they were done, but the consequences of their actions lingered, shouting out loud for others to understand.
     No, it was not their mess; they didn't make it. It was not their job; they were not paid to clean up trash. And no, they were not dressed to do disgusting work. But they did it anyway. They were thoughtful and kind and decent anyway.
     These are the young people I hope will lead the world someday.




Sunday, October 9, 2016

Halloween Poems by R.E.Goodrich

In the spirit of All Hallows Eve, I dug up a few of my original short Halloween poems. I put some new verses in the mix to celebrate this spooky holiday. I hope you enjoy them.




A pumpkin lives but once a year
when someone sets its soul afire
and on that night it stirs up fear
until its flame is snuffed.
But e'en one night of eerie light is fright enough.




Monsters excite us in this way or that.
They make our pulse thrum and steal lives from the cat!
They're frightening creatures, one peek and you'll see.
Yet life without monsters, how dull it would be.
Your tense, nervous laugh tells me you disagree?

Richelle E. GoodrichSmile Anyway




Witches cackle.
Goblins growl.
Spectres boo,
And werewolves howl.
Black cats hiss.
Bats flap their wings.
Mummies moan.
The cold wind sings.
Ogre’s roar.
And crows, they caw.
Vampires bahahahaha.
Warlocks swish their moonlit capes.
Loch Ness monsters churn the lake.
Skeletons, they rattle bones
While graveyards crack the old headstones.
All the while the ghouls, they cry
To trick-or-treaters passing by.
Oh, the noise on Halloween;
It makes me want to scream!




A Halloween flower,
if ever there was one,
would smell like an onion,
have thorns like a rose.
With charcoal black petals
and vines that entangle,
t'would grow under moonlight
in mud, I suppose.







Treats and tricks.
Witch broomsticks.
Jack-o-lanterns
Lick their lips.

Crows and cats.
Vampire bats.
Capes and fangs
And pointed hats.

Werewolves howl.
Phantoms prowl.
Halloween’s
Upon us now.

 




Haunt an old house.
Ask for a treat.
Laugh like a witch.
Lick something sweet.
Offer a trick.
Wander a maze.
Echo a boo.
Exclaim the phrase—
Normal's unnatural on Halloween!





The jack-o-lantern follows me with tapered, glowing eyes.
His yellow teeth grin evily. His cackle I despise.
But I shall have the final laugh when Halloween is through.
This pumpkin king I’ll split in half to make a pie for two.

Richelle E. Goodrich





The coldest day in fall
is at the Hallows Evening ball
where ghoulish fun
avoids the sun
as monsters mingle wall to wall.



Copyright 2016 Richelle E. Goodrich

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Tarishe Curse―A NEW Post on Halloween

     Halloween is just around the pumpkin patch! I have finished writing the next installment of my traditional tale for All Hallows Eve, an ongoing story about the cursed queen of werefolk, Duvalla. Only a few short days and it will be time to post the next portion of this dark adventure. You have just enough time to re-read the story from the beginning. Enjoy, and be anxious for what is to come!


by Richelle E. Goodrich


Saturday, August 13, 2016

A Different Type of Book

After finishing the last and final chapter of the Harrowbethian Saga, I wept for a short time, a mixture of joyous and desolate tears.  I had accomplished far more than the one book I had set out to write.  What a wondrous feeling of completion!  But now it was over.  "The End" inked on the page.  What now?  

It had taken me four years to write out the original first draft comprising 139 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue that in sum amounted to the entire saga.  I was well-pleased with the adventure, a fantasysci firomance sprinkled with myth and magic.  It had been a delightful and entertaining hike through my imagination.  A crazy, BIG achievement that left me itching to write more.

But what if I were to write a different type of book this time around.  A novel.  More realistic.  Less fantastical.  One with the power to manipulate a reader's heart.

Sold on the idea, I went about accomplishing the task.  The result is a book about little Miss Anna, entitled Dandelions:The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher.

It is a stand-alone novel that proved a struggle to compose, and yet I found it immeasurably rewarding.  In the end I was able to shape a loveable character named Annabelle, a girl both young and fragile, mature and clever. 


Dandelions:The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher is the fictional tale of an elementary-aged girl struggling to cope with her aggrieved mother and alcoholic father.  By day-dreaming characters to life from popular fairytales, she manages to create make-believe moments of happiness in the midst of harsh circumstances. School is the only place Annabelle interacts socially where a few individuals suspecting her circumstances attempt to reach out to the wary girl. But it is an imagined friend whom she turns to repeatedly for comfort and kindness. When his ghostly form appears before her during waking hours, his voice augmenting the hallucination, it becomes a struggle to keep reality and pretend from blurring boundaries. Her choice, it seems, is to succumb to madness, and happily so, or embrace her cruel reality.



     You will fall in love with Annabelle instantly, cherishing the way she makes you take notice of the simple wonders in life. Your heart will bleed for her and the awful circumstances dealt to the child. And yet you will find moments to smile—appreciating a simple, budding friendship and experiencing her young, beautiful imagination. Be touched by a kind heart and the amazingly mature spirit of this wonderful creature. This book is a worthwhile read for so many reasons.

Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher is available at the following online retailers:


KINDLE   NOOK   KOBO   iTUNES






Saturday, July 30, 2016

Official Website for American Author, Richelle E. Goodrich

    My website has recently undergone a complete renovation, and I have to say I love it!  One of my favorite details is that on every page at the top border there is a stretch of forest behind the title.  It's no secret I have a thing for trees.  They are beautiful creatures and the best keepers of secrets.  So yes, I'm happy with the mystical forests that vary from webpage to webpage.  
    Other things you will find at my official author website include book quotes from my published works, vibrant cover images linked to summaries of each book, information about Harrowbeth and other nations on Moccobatra, a page for comments and questions, and a little blurb about me personally as an author.  Please, go visit my newly remodeled website at RichelleGoodrich.com and take a look around.  It's a walk through the forest, so don't forget to admire the trees!



Friday, July 22, 2016

The Mossy Hill

Behind my house within walking distance is a big, beautiful hill.  I fell in love with it growing up as a child years ago.  I would look to the hill many times a day, studying its mossy spots; its hairy, golden veins; and the muddy flecks that mimicked a scattering of bulbous rocks.  Because of the hill, I learned to adore the evening sunset for unusual reasons no one would ever believe.  Not because the red sun dyed the hump of my hill a dark maroon when the two appeared to touch.  And not because of the way the sky mixed rosy and smoky clouds together as they reached down from above…or up from below—it was hard to say which way they swirled to spread as sheer as a veil.  No, the reason I loved the sunset enough to watch it faithfully every night, either from up on the rooftop or from a private spot in the cattails near the creek below my house, was because that beautiful hill showed me twice in a night the same marvelous sunset. 
First upside up.  And then upside down.
Please don’t laugh.  The sun did indeed set twice in a night for me.  My mother would laugh whenever I tried to convince her it was true.  More than once I persuaded her to sit and watch, directing her eyes to a small rise attached to the steeper hill next to it.  When the final red tinge of sun vanished completely and the world went dark, I would look to the lesser rise, knowing a red sun would manifest itself once again on its rugged face.
“Look, Mama, look!  You will see it!  The sun will show itself again, it will!  And it will set upside down—I’m not lying!”
But no matter how long she waited, her patience was never long enough.  “Silly girl,” she would say.  “I see nothing but stars.”
“But it’s true, Mama!  The sun will show itself again if you wait.”
And she did wait.
But it didn’t show in all that time.
“It must be an illusion,” she finally decided, believing her daughter would not lie.  “Perhaps the moon reflects the sun onto that rise on rare nights.”
“On every night, Mama,” I corrected.
Her smile was playful and doubtful at the same time.  She then walked away sighing, “Oh, silly girl.”
Alone I would wait until, as faithfully as ever, the red sun appeared on the smaller rise, divided by a vertical wisp of black.  Slowly, surely, it sank upside down until it disappeared.
And so it was I grew to be a young woman in love with a magical hill—for that is the logical conclusion I drew at its repeating of an upturned sunset each night for my eyes only.  Mother, though she never witnessed the miracle, labeled it an illusion.  I dubbed it magic.  For what else could explain a single sun setting twice within a span of minutes, and topsy-turvy at that?  I will admit there were occasions when I stood on my head in the grass, feet propped high against the trunk of an oak tree, in order to see the second sunset properly.  Never with Mother nearby.  For she would surely gasp and say, “How terribly unladylike!” 
One cloudy evening, only a few sunsets after my seventeenth birthday, I was nearing my quiet spot amongst the cattails by the creek when something stirred in my stomach.  It felt awful.  At the same time, I glimpsed a figure move within the cattails, but I had no idea if what I’d find there would prove as awful as my stomach’s uneasiness seemed to anticipate. For those who doubt, I emphatically insist that it is a wise rule to listen to your stomach.  It has an uncanny sense about the reality of things.  On this particular occasion I failed to heed that uncomfortable warning and continued cautiously forward to my spot within the cluster of tall cattails.  My stomach did a somersault when a very large man stepped out into the open and faced me.  He was smiling in a manner that could never—even by the most naïve minds—be mistaken for friendly.
I turned to run back to the house, but I was grabbed by the man who lunged at me with the speed of a cobra.  He yanked my body to him.  When my lungs filled with air, preparing to scream, he stifled the sound with a firm hand, smothering my face.  Desperate to breath, I tried in vain to pry his fingers away.  He dragged me into the cattails before slipping his hand down off my nose, allowing me to draw in oxygen but still barring any ability to scream.  As the man growled in my ear, insensible words dripping with malice, I feared for my life.
“They thought they could hide you from me, that I wouldn’t detect your putrid stench out here in the middle of nowhere.  But I swore to them I’d hunt you down—every last one of you.  So far I’ve kept my word.  I’ve diminished your numbers and robbed you of those abominable service creatures.  And I never stopped searching for you, young one—in caves and deserts and every other inhospitable corner of existence.  I even bribed the vagrant sailors of pirate ships, thinking they might find you in transport when your superiors finally decided to call you overseas.  But no—you’re not quite old enough to be summoned yet.  So I’ll kill you now as I did the others.  I’ll end your life before it becomes my misfortune.  When you’re dead, I’ll wait here for your service creatures to show their vile forms, and then I will slay them as well.” 
I was sucking in air through my nose while these words hit my ear, void of meaning.  Nothing he said made the least amount of sense to me.  Surely, he had mistaken me for a hostile individual capable of causing him torment. 
I was no one to fear.  No one at all.
His fingers clamped down over my nose once again as if he meant to suffocate the life out of me.  I fought him with all my might, knowing my struggles were futile; his strength far surpassed my own.  My eyes flickered back at the hill I loved so much as if to say “goodbye,” at which time I caught a peculiar sight.  Two suns were visible at once—one red orb hanging above the hill and a second orb aglow on the face of the lower rise.  I thought, perhaps, that my senses were being impaired by lack of oxygen. 
When the ground quaked beneath my feet, it seemed as if the planet itself had chosen to come to my rescue.  The tremors managed to pull the grassy footing from beneath my assailant.  He tumbled over and his hands flailed outward, releasing me.  Coughing and gasping for air, I scrambled to get away from him, deterred by the shaking ground until it suddenly ceased.  My eyes darted from the grass to my beloved hill, only to find that it was gone.  The setting sun hung low in the sky over a completely flat horizon!
I was about to flee for home, more concerned for self-preservation than the miraculous disappearance of an entire hill, when the man shrieked, making my eyes turn back to him.  My body slowly followed suit, astounded by what my eyes were registering. 
My would-be killer was on the ground looking up into the face of an ominous, hovering beast kept aloft by giant wings.  The body of the creature was humped, covered in mossy spots and hairy, golden veins and muddy, bulbous flecks that resembled exactly the missing hill.  It dawned on me that the low rise normally sitting adjacent to the hill was the beast’s head.  I knew this without a doubt because a red eye glared from the side of its head, mimicking the sun at dusk.  I gasped, realizing my beloved hill was in actuality a dragon!  My topsy-turvy sunset wasn’t at all a second sunset but a dragon’s bright eye which opened up each and every evening to look out at the world before vanishing under dragon eyelids.
I wondered, was this beast a service creature like those the vile man had muttered about in my ear?  There would be no asking him, for he was swallowed whole by the beast in question, scarcely able to let out a final shriek.
The dragon’s face turned to stare at me full on, revealing two glowing, red eyes.  My stomach felt calm, but in my mind I feared this was no service creature but a monster that meant to feed on me as it had the unfortunate man.  The dragon made no sudden moves, however, and the sword-like teeth I had glimpsed in its mouth were not shown to me again.  The dragon lowered its head.  Cautiously I approached, moving just close enough to reach out and touch its snout.  As my fingers made contact with the scaly texture of its skin, a waft of swirly, gray smoke puffed from both nostrils, startling me, convincing my feet to scuttle backwards.  Its immense body rotated in the air, and I watched in awe as a pair of giant wings took the creature back to its resting place where once again he appeared as a distant hill blocking out the setting sun.
“Thank you,” I breathed as the dragon closed its eyes.
I immediately ran to the house to relay the entire story to my mother who became greatly agitated at my mention of a stranger, and then greatly perturbed at my insistence that a man-eating dragon did indeed live past the creek behind our house.  The truth was ultimately labeled an outlandish illusion, and I was informed by my mother that a career in story-telling might very well suit me.
That was all about a year ago today.  And I shall never forget the life-changing moment I discovered that the hill I loved was in truth a dragon I loved even more.  Now, as I turn eighteen, my stomach twists itself up into knots.  I have learned to listen to it, for its predictions have yet to be wrong.  I know something is coming.  A change in my life and in the world itself.  What sort of change, I don’t know.  But I am sure it involves me and my dragon.  The great beast has awakened for the second time in my young life, but I have no fear.  It intends to take me somewhere.  Somewhere I am needed.  And when my mother sees that I and the great hill behind our house are both gone, she might come to believe in my illusions… and in dragons.

~ By Richelle E. Goodrich  Copyright 2016

Saturday, July 2, 2016

His Open Door

"Ma'am," he said, reaching for the door.  He held it open, his posture as erect and sturdy as a pole.

I eyed the man's uniform, the pins and badges that signified his military rank and position.  At that moment I felt opposing forces wash over me, clashing internally like a cold and warm front meeting in the air.

At first I was hit by a burning sense of respect and gratitude.  How privileged a person I was to have this soldier unbar the way for me, maintaining a clear path that I might advance unhindered.  The symbolism marked by his actions did strike me with remarkable intensity.  How many virtual doors would be shut in my face if not for dutiful soldiers like him?

As I went to step forward, my feet nearly faltered as if they felt unworthy.  It was I who ought to be holding open the door for this gentleman—this representative of great heroes present and past who did fight and sacrifice and continue to do so to keep doors open, paths free and clear for all of humanity.  


I moved through the entrance and thanked him.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

How strange that I should feel such pride while passing through his open door.

~ From the book, Slaying Dragons by Richelle E. Goodrich