Ann and Anna, (serial short story, Part 6): Believe

 

                 Part 5 was last Sunday, 

 

     “Yes, Ma’am.”  I nodded again, hoping she was right, but not truly believing it, in my heart of hearts.  I reached out, and she opened her hand, lacing her fingers through mine. I could have stayed like that forever, but old Mary shifted her weight, reminding us that none of us were our own mistresses.  We must hurry on, if we were to remain out of chains.

 

     “Believe it.”    How did she do that?  There it was.  She had that twinkle in her eye.

 

She gently released my hand, patting Mary’s broad neck as she glanced at my reins before ducking under the head of her own horse.  She was mounted before I even noticed.  She was so practiced at this, I knew, but still felt in awe of her dexterity.  Both of mind and of body.

 

As we continued in the direction which, if I recalled my lessons correctly, was meant to be North by North West, I wondered how much longer we might be out here, at the mercy of any poor Marylander in need of our reward money.

 

For, rewards, on both our heads, there surely would be.

 

     “I don’t mean to pry, but I do wonder something.”  I turned my head, and saw that twinkle, again.  “Will we be out here, I mean in these woods, for much longer?”

 

     “No, Miss Willow,” she’d answered with the softness of a fuzzy pod seed, “we will not.”  She’d looked over at me, touching me with her eyes.  “Another day or so, at the outside.  By then we should be in the town of Westminster, where we are to meet up with Dr. H.”

 

I felt badly then, recalling how the panic of little Sal and my dear Miss Mary had spoiled our carefully laid plans for a quiet escape, forcing the retreat to our secondary, and less convenable, escape plans.  I could only hope and pray that things did not go too hard with Sal, Mary, and the others back there, who had been made to pay for my errors, the last time.

I could not bear to think on it.

—

 

       This is the continuation scene in my new series  Ann&Anna.  I  hope that this series will move you to learn more ways to help use our history to build new tools.

 Part 5 was last Sunday, and Part 7 (Rock), posted the next Sunday.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Shira

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on how this story may encourage empathy-building cooperation, and might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

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Read, Write

-we can learn from the past Stayed on Freedom’s Call for free,

     by Teaching and Learning (Lesson Plans offline) in the present, to

           We can  Do Better: a Vision of a Better World to create a kinder future

 

( 5 month GED lesson 16 of 67 plans),

   and  Babylon 5 review posts, from a Minbari Ranger’s perspective: story inspires learning…

Toward Peace,

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

the year, 2021 CE = year 12021 HE

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page, and please do let us know here that you’ve reviewed it there!  🙂

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.