5 Mins a Day- March 28 2013
Sky's burning blue! Cross seas and skies.. Kitty cat attack! Murder is a game building your own puzzle pieces... the assassin catkin! Thief assassin spy. Frozen oceans... worldwide world crossing equatorial land bridge. Good luck California. Look to the west where the sun is never painted grey. Go west! What is that call? That incessant need to follow the sun? Chase it cross a country? To the West? To California! The name is ever sweet on my brain and tongue. The California republic! I will see her again one day.
"The Cali fever is a curse!" The grizzled old preacher shouted. "A devil's curse set to weed out those unworthy of Heaven..."
"I'm afraid he has Cali fever," the round, earthy doctor muttered. The mother gasped; the father would look grim. That's always how it was.
Of course they couldn't just let their young people run off to the west- that's where the hot depths of hell opened up to the earth. The children with the fever could not be allowed to go west...! So for their own safety they were sent to Convent House, where they would be taken care of until the fever passed.
"I started crying for the sunset when I was twelve," she said. That was how introductions went in Convent House- you explained how your fever started. "Nigh on twenty years now, and at night I still shed tears to be dancing with the devil at the sunset's bed. 'Course you don't let 'em know you still cry for the west; then you'd never leave here again. It was a warning, from she to he. He nodded and she looked expectant.
"Truly, I coulda been here a year ago," he said. "I felt something in me want so bad to know what it's like where the sun sets. But I didn't say anything- then one day the preacher caught me with my back to the sunrise. And I went here."
"I've heard tell the devil is a beautiful princess, half Siren, singing a song only the damned can here," the old woman whispered. "A song calling the damned to her so that we may meet our eternal hell without the extra pain of physical death. As sort of ah, an apology. A small consolation for an eternity of suffering."
"I wonder why they call it Cali fever," he whispered, body jittering. Tonight was the night and if he didn't distract himself with small talk he'd wear down his nerves in minutes.
"Mayhap it's the name of the princess," she replied drily.
The Forest! The darkness was even darker in the forbidden, impassable woods, as the thick canopy blotted out even the moon and starlight- only a few renegade beams managed to pierce the leafy veil, and grimly the two were reminded just how human their eyes were.
Stories were told of this forest- stories to frighten children. Though they weren't children, the memories of the stories did frighten them- two young people in a haunted forest in the dark of the night.
"At least we thought to pack blankets," he muttered, wrapping the thin fabric around himself as armor against the morning chill. "And the treetops kept most of the dew off of us."
She, however, was in no mood to see the brighter side. "We forgot to pack food," was her miserable answer to his attempted optimist.
