by Five Sisters

Created on: October 23, 2009

Mismatched foreclosure signs banged it out in accord as the breeze played the part of conductor. The unaccompanied cadence was the only echo for blocks and it began to hurt Kerri's ears. She wondered if Charlie minded, he didn't seem to. His expression hadn't changed for miles. Across his face sat the contentment of seeing the world in a whole different way. He did however start to shift his weight as they turned their last corner. A sense of familiar? A scent of home?

She pulled her truck up short of the driveway. The tires rubbed a soft kiss on the curb, not something new. That this was no longer her home, was. She had lost it to the bank when the company she worked for, for the last eight years closed down. Cali Enrichments hightailed it to China when the stocks fell and the market prices soared. Not able to renew their lease, they made the decision to move, six thousand miles away.

She lowered herself out quickly enough to miss a Charlie plow down. When the door was opened, the race to the exit was always a good one no matter who was sitting beside it. He beat her to the porch and preformed his famed we're-finally-home shuffle to the tune of the neighborhood wood.

"No Charlie boy, we're not going in," she said heading out back behind the house. She had her shovel in hand. "Come!"

Always willing to please her, he tore right past as his came turned to went in a blink. He brushed by his kennel on the way down to the hedgerows and sniffed at it once for confirmation. It no longer smelt like him, this held a smidge of importance. That it hadn't been reclaimed, was pivotal.

Kerri watched as he romped down his old familiar path the same one she too was now on. There was still evidence of track left behind. It was created from the years of a well run routine. She took that track down past the split rail merely glancing in on the now madcap perennial nation. She had no time or interest to stop and inspect what was lost. She was already having a hard time keeping it together. Searching for more proof of collapse held no benefit.

Fifteen feet short of the hedgerow she stopped beside what she had come for. Kerri had returned to rescue her holly trees. One boy, one girl, both incredibly loved and both about to be saved. They had been given to her by her husband just after moving in. He knew her love for the earth was stronger than any additional weight he could ever place on her finger. He planted them in the light of a full moon two nights short of her twenty-eighth

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