Prompt 60--Leathery
Sep. 15th, 2007 08:41 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dedra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Touched
Fandom: None--OC
Warnings: Schmoop alert!
Rating: G
Summary: When you've been touched, your life is never the same.
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon as she drove down the road. A light misty rain had started to fall as she headed to her rendezvous with a lover; in her excitement and anticipation, she missed the turnoff and slid on the graveled road.
Without warning, her compact car headed for the ditch and landed nose down. Water poured over the hood and shorted out the headlights as the tears washed over her cheeks. She held her hand to her chest, aware of the near miss and possible consequences of the accident; it wouldn’t be the first time that she had lost someone in a car wreck. She was overwhelmed that it wasn’t her own life in the balance this time.
With a great deal of difficulty she climbed out of the car and out of the ditch, her legs protesting with every move as the mud slid under her feet. When at last she made it to solid ground once again, she tried to wipe off the worst of the mud and gravel as she surveyed the position she was in.
Her car, actually her boyfriend’s car, was nose down in a ditch. The road was deserted, not a car or house in sight. She looked like she’d been crawling in the mud for days and there was nowhere to go to call for help, either from a tow truck or a friend.
She dropped her head into her hands and let the tears fall freely. “Please, God, if you’re listening, could you possibly send me some help?”
She stared at the taillights of the car as they blinked their hypnotic rhythm into the rain that was falling harder now. Her clothes began to soak through and she was starting to feel the chill of the autumn winds as they began to blow, curling around her feet and snuggling up to her to share the cold.
With a sigh, she turned. Behind her was a tractor, its motor idling as the man on the seat looked over the situation.
Too many questions filled her mind. Where had it come from? Why didn’t she hear it as it approached? What the hell was going on? She started to open her mouth and an unseen force stopped her. She could remember one of her grandma’s favorite platitudes—’never look a gift horse in the mouth’—so she waited for the man to finish his appraisal.
With a hopeful look, she approached him, an expression of trepidation on her face. “Can you possibly help me get my car out of the ditch?”
She looked up into his face. It was slightly leathery from the sun, wrinkled and wizened by time and age. He swung himself down from the seat of the tractor and grabbed a chain from beneath the seat without speaking a word to her. She noticed the empty sleeve of his left arm swinging freely and realized that he only had one arm.
As she watched, he clambered down the slippery slope and attached the chain to the frame of the car. With a spry step that belied his years, he nearly leaped out of the ditch and attached the other end of the chain to the back of the tractor.
Moments later, the car was back on the graveled road and he was jumping back down out of the seat, climbing under the car to retrieve the chain, and coiling it up with his single arm.
Emboldened and grateful, she approached him. Laying her hand on his arm, she smiled up into the face that had seemed so old moments before, surprised to find it youthful, unlined, and tanned. “Let me give you something for your trouble. You don’t know how much I appreciate your help.”
Turning, she reached inside her car for her purse. When she turned back around with a folded bill in her hand, she found the tractor had mysteriously disappeared.
She looked up and down the road, expecting to see him driving along one of the crossroads. It was as empty as it had been less than an hour before, without a house, car, or tractor in sight.
Who was that man?
She could only come up with one explanation that seemed to fit. As Arthur Conan Doyle had often written in his books, when all other possibilities are discarded, the remainder is usually the answer.
The tractor made no sound except when it was moving her car out of the ditch. He hadn’t spoken a word, not a single syllable in their entire encounter. He had disappeared in a flash on a flat road with no outlet that would have hidden him from her sight.
With a deep sigh, she decided that no matter how insane it sounded, she had met her guardian angel. A guardian angel with one arm and a face that could morph from old to young in a matter of minutes, wouldn’t speak or respond to her queries, and disappeared when the job was complete.
She knew how crazy it sounded. It sounded insane to her own reckoning. However, it was the only possible answer to the situation at hand.
She would talk to her mother when she got home. Instead of heading to her lover’s house, she turned the car around carefully, turned the radio and heater on high and headed home.
When you’ve been touched by an angel, no matter how vague or disquieting, no matter how brief, something changes inside you. It changed inside her that morning; she could never and would never be the same.
Fandom: None--OC
Warnings: Schmoop alert!
Rating: G
Summary: When you've been touched, your life is never the same.
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon as she drove down the road. A light misty rain had started to fall as she headed to her rendezvous with a lover; in her excitement and anticipation, she missed the turnoff and slid on the graveled road.
Without warning, her compact car headed for the ditch and landed nose down. Water poured over the hood and shorted out the headlights as the tears washed over her cheeks. She held her hand to her chest, aware of the near miss and possible consequences of the accident; it wouldn’t be the first time that she had lost someone in a car wreck. She was overwhelmed that it wasn’t her own life in the balance this time.
With a great deal of difficulty she climbed out of the car and out of the ditch, her legs protesting with every move as the mud slid under her feet. When at last she made it to solid ground once again, she tried to wipe off the worst of the mud and gravel as she surveyed the position she was in.
Her car, actually her boyfriend’s car, was nose down in a ditch. The road was deserted, not a car or house in sight. She looked like she’d been crawling in the mud for days and there was nowhere to go to call for help, either from a tow truck or a friend.
She dropped her head into her hands and let the tears fall freely. “Please, God, if you’re listening, could you possibly send me some help?”
She stared at the taillights of the car as they blinked their hypnotic rhythm into the rain that was falling harder now. Her clothes began to soak through and she was starting to feel the chill of the autumn winds as they began to blow, curling around her feet and snuggling up to her to share the cold.
With a sigh, she turned. Behind her was a tractor, its motor idling as the man on the seat looked over the situation.
Too many questions filled her mind. Where had it come from? Why didn’t she hear it as it approached? What the hell was going on? She started to open her mouth and an unseen force stopped her. She could remember one of her grandma’s favorite platitudes—’never look a gift horse in the mouth’—so she waited for the man to finish his appraisal.
With a hopeful look, she approached him, an expression of trepidation on her face. “Can you possibly help me get my car out of the ditch?”
She looked up into his face. It was slightly leathery from the sun, wrinkled and wizened by time and age. He swung himself down from the seat of the tractor and grabbed a chain from beneath the seat without speaking a word to her. She noticed the empty sleeve of his left arm swinging freely and realized that he only had one arm.
As she watched, he clambered down the slippery slope and attached the chain to the frame of the car. With a spry step that belied his years, he nearly leaped out of the ditch and attached the other end of the chain to the back of the tractor.
Moments later, the car was back on the graveled road and he was jumping back down out of the seat, climbing under the car to retrieve the chain, and coiling it up with his single arm.
Emboldened and grateful, she approached him. Laying her hand on his arm, she smiled up into the face that had seemed so old moments before, surprised to find it youthful, unlined, and tanned. “Let me give you something for your trouble. You don’t know how much I appreciate your help.”
Turning, she reached inside her car for her purse. When she turned back around with a folded bill in her hand, she found the tractor had mysteriously disappeared.
She looked up and down the road, expecting to see him driving along one of the crossroads. It was as empty as it had been less than an hour before, without a house, car, or tractor in sight.
Who was that man?
She could only come up with one explanation that seemed to fit. As Arthur Conan Doyle had often written in his books, when all other possibilities are discarded, the remainder is usually the answer.
The tractor made no sound except when it was moving her car out of the ditch. He hadn’t spoken a word, not a single syllable in their entire encounter. He had disappeared in a flash on a flat road with no outlet that would have hidden him from her sight.
With a deep sigh, she decided that no matter how insane it sounded, she had met her guardian angel. A guardian angel with one arm and a face that could morph from old to young in a matter of minutes, wouldn’t speak or respond to her queries, and disappeared when the job was complete.
She knew how crazy it sounded. It sounded insane to her own reckoning. However, it was the only possible answer to the situation at hand.
She would talk to her mother when she got home. Instead of heading to her lover’s house, she turned the car around carefully, turned the radio and heater on high and headed home.
When you’ve been touched by an angel, no matter how vague or disquieting, no matter how brief, something changes inside you. It changed inside her that morning; she could never and would never be the same.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 09:34 pm (UTC)2. The talk with my mom was about angels and how they can appear. Depending on the prompt posted later, I may share my mom's angel story with you all.
3. How could I keep going to do something that I knew was so wrong when I held such peace and love inside me? I was cheating and I knew that it was bad--I was so overwhelmed that I really did turn the car right around and went right back home to my momma's arms.
4. It wasn't the first time that I was touched. There's been others. Maybe I'll write up a post on my 'encounters' with angels and God Himself and send you a link--they are quite varied and different from each other.
5. I figure that you already knew that this really happened, but if you didn't, it did. I was 22 at the time. Thank you for your review--I look forward to it every week.
♥
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 11:24 am (UTC)(and I look forward to what you post each week!)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-20 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-24 08:13 am (UTC)