Hot soup was already billowing steam beside my head when the dying fire blurred back into my vision.
The scent of creamy pumpkin and parsley filled my lungs as I inhaled deeply, dragging my hands from under my head to cradle the sides of the bowl.
Missy was in the kitchen, hacking at the rest of the pumpkin. It was a wonder the sound of it splitting and the knife cutting into her wooden chopping board didn't wake me sooner.
She had a pot already boiling to slide the chunks into. The fire beneath flared and sizzled the vein of water that spilled onto it when Missy scraped her chopping board clean. Her fingers pulled at the parsley in her window so she could quickly dice it then sprinkle it in too.
I could taste it when I sipped from my own bowl under my blanket. The flecks clung to my teeth to make the powerful earthy pepper flavour of the herb linger longer than the pumpkin burning a trail down to my stomach.
This was how things should be. Nothing else but blissful silence and enjoying each other's company away from the storm.
I could easily see myself growing fat from Missy's cooking and living it up as a complacent pet. I wasn't going to let that happen, but it sure was tempting.
I could do more for her than just lay here. The storm was still raging outside and the dampness of Missy's hair told me she had braved it just for a moment for her single pumpkin. I could save the rest of her vegetables before they were split or hurled across into the fields.
I heard Missy move as soon as I got up and abandoned the blanket to slink for the back door where the drying basket was.
"Soup?"
"I'll be back" I told her, turning with the basket handle in my mouth "see?"
Rushing out the back door, I was thrown into darkness again.
Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by veins of thunder snaking between the swirling clouds.
It really was pretty when it wasn't close. By the delayed sound of it, the worst of it had to be quite a few kilometres away.
Still, I had to fight the winds and rain whipping around me. With only my sight to guide me, I sloshed through the trenches for the smaller vegetable vines that were already snapped or dangling from broken supports.
What a mess it all was. Everything was broken or drowning in the rain. The little patch would have to be completely replaced when the ground was good to cut through again.
Picking up the carrots that had been flushed from their holes, I inched along the beds to see seedlings Missy had planted were already dead from the trauma of the storm.
The small corn stalks weren't looking much better. Casings that were supposed to be protecting the valuable vegetables still growing were strewn across the ground, even burying some other plants.
I found potatoes drowning further away, and added them to the pitiful harvest. Another pumpkin was smashed to spill it's seeds across the mud squishing between my toes.
I couldn't pick the others since they weren't ripe. They'd have to be left to chance like the others.
Spotting the blueberry bush in the corner, I sighed at the broken branches collapsed around it. It didn't even have time to fruit in the short time it was flourishing.
Plucking up a the branches and threading them through the basket, I used another flash of lightning to spy what I saw was left of a zucchini patch I had missed.
Flicking the mud from the mostly buried plants, I heaved up some sizeable vegetables to add them to my pile.
There were quite a few here to plunge my hands through the mud to find. I was almost up to my elbows and fighting the mud flicking my face from the rain before it completely stopped.
Looking up, I saw Missy holding the blanket above us. She chuckled down at me.
"You are a confusing one, you know that?" she grinned.
Grateful for the shelter, I was able to rip up the zucchini I could save. The split ones were thrown back to the mud.
"What a mess" Missy sadly surveyed her broken garden as lightning illuminated the extent of the damage briefly.
Suddenly, she gasped and pointed a finger back to the pumpkins.
"Look! One made it!"
I hadn't seen it before, but there it was, barely above the mud swallowing it up.
"Come on! Quick!" she urged.
I snatched up the basket to follow under the sagging blanket she held above us to the lone pumpkin.
Missy dropped the blanket over herself so she could squat down and twist at the hefty vegetable resisting against her.
She grunted and heaved, squealing out when it finally gave and sent her falling back into the mud.
"Ohh!" she moaned at her wet backside, laughing to the pumpkin she held against herself.
"Come on" I snorted at her before helping shove her back to her feet. I took the pumpkin from her to carry the stem between my teeth.
Missy looped my basket through her arm and pushed the blanket back above her to try and keep out more of the rain.
She ran for the back door, and I followed, until the howling wind had me pausing in my tracks.
The rain was sobbing. There was a quiet whine and a warbling sound.
I thought I heard something in it. A voice....
"Soup! Come on!" Missy called out desperately from inside.
Maybe it was just her? I swear I heard something.
Straining my ears, I tried to pick the noise, but it all sounded the same. The wind was playing tricks on me. The crack of thunder made my attempts only in vain.
"What are you doing?" Missy called out again.
I was hearing things. The storm was trying to disorientate me into running blind through it.
Rushing the pumpkin up the back stairs and to Missy who shoved the back door closed again, I was met with a puzzled look.
"Was there something out there?" Missy pondered with a look to the door as she hoisted the dripping blanket into the bathroom to dry.
I honestly didn't know. It was confusing me how real it sounded. It was as if the wind itself had been quietly sobbing out a single strained word.
It sounded almost like a child. But there were no other houses around this one. It had to be a cruel trick the storm was playing.
Leaving the pumpkin at the floor of the kitchen bench, I pulled open the front door to squeeze outside and back into the pelting rain blowing against the house.
Missy pulled up the window.
"What is it?" she squinted as she scanned the strewn flower fields.
I squinted too, trying to prove to myself that it really was just the storm frustrating my senses.
Maybe I was going delirious from the cold? Now that I was searching for it, the noise didn't whisper in the wind I turned from to retreat back inside where it was warmer.
"It's nothing" I told myself more than Missy who quickly closed the window again and wiped her wet face.
Helping in the kitchen would take my mind of the strangeness of it all. I wasn't going to let it worry me anymore.
ns 15.158.61.5da2
