by Caroline Tigeress

Created on: July 09, 2009

The tattered hammock held the old crone's form. Her weather wizened face, now in her late nineties had seen a world come to its apex, and then fall without grace.

She sat on it cross wise, watching the children play sword fighting with sticks of oak from the local trees. The hilts of which were cross-members held tight not with nails, but with hand spun fibers. Skills long dormant, relearned.

When the children became to get tired, they traipsed up to their grandmother. She set out a few cut-up apples and some hand made biscuits.

Both the boy and the girl yawned. They were six and seven respectively, brother and sister. The boy's name was Jaden, the Girl's May. They were the youngest of her seven grandchildren.

Jaden yawned.

"Getting tired?" Grandmother Peabody said.

Jaden shook his head left and right defiantly, and then May yawned. Grandmother Peabody yawned as well.

"Children, your old grandma is pretty tired, and is thinking she wants a little nap. Why don't you come up here and have a little rest. You don't have to sleep, but a little rest and then you can go back to playing. I'll even tell you a story."

Both children leapt upon her as she lay down, fluffing up the duck down pillows. The breeze swept through them, and she concluded that perhaps the things that happened were for the better.

"Now what story would you like to hear, little ones?" She asked, already knowing the answer.

"The old times!" May piped up, and Jaden echoed right after.

She chuckled, and began a story.

"Remember back a ways, oh about a year ago, we found that large vehicle, the one with all the wheels on it? Back in the day, that was called semi-truck, and you old grandmother drove one for a while."

"No way!" Jaden exclaimed.

"It's a fact. I think I still have my old driving license. You see when the storm came; grandmother was actually in a vehicle much like that one. Remember the old map book with the glossy pages that I gave your mother?"

"Uh-huh." May muttered, on the verge of sleep, but wanting to hear the story.

"That is what is called a Motor Carrier's Atlas. It has special routes that only those big rigs can drive on. You had to cross state lines and only drive on certain routes."

"Grandma, didn't you say you were in one of those when it happened." Jaden asked.

"I did indeed. I was in the old state of what they called Montana. Just out of a big city called Billings. It was November thirteenth, a Friday to be precise." She said with a

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