Hero

Hero: in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, displays courage. In every story, there is a hero or heroine. Always. Emerson said, "Each man is a hero and oracle to somebody." She has looked for the oracle everywhere. Heard in small moments alone, a slight whisper, easy enough to discount.

_______________________________________________

The girl's heart hurts so much tonight. She thought she was going to sleep in a room looking out at a frozen lake, but instead is in the same place she was last night. On the couch. The computer in her lap. She imagines how the lake would look in the morning, thawing maybe. Slightly. Maybe. She thinks of sitting on the dock, watching the ice flows.

The girl remembers when her father lived briefly in Port Huron one winter. She and her mother and brother went up to see him. She walked on the frozen lake, the water was frozen up into jagged waves. Once she would cross over one icy wave, she'd be in the valley between snowy ice. She imagined the ice cracking beneath her so she quickly moved back over the frozen wave to her father and mother's side. She wonders if that is what the lake would have looked like had she gone today. She thinks of walking along the shoreline. She thinks she should be there now. The ice is cracking beneath her. Maybe she will go there soon.

__________________________________________

There's no hero in the story. Not yet. She is picking up the pen though. Maybe she will write her own hero into the story this time. Maybe she will be the hero for picking up the pen. Maybe she is her own oracle.