Prologue

The instant Margaret Horn’s two lower right ribs broke into six pieces it was a Thursday and she was eight years, two months, and four days old. A year prior to the breaking of her two lower right ribs, Margaret quietly nodded when asked by her father, George Horn, to go to Brazil on another one of his many mysterious adventures to South America.

A peculiar man, Margaret's father had spent most of Margaret's eight years, two months, and four days of life to explore the majority of South America in solitude, and most notably without Margaret. And due to the disappearance of Margaret's mother shortly after her birth, most of her life prior to her first trip to Brazil was spent living quietly with her paralyzed uncle and eccentric French aunt, Richard and Colette Horn, just outside of the great city she would one day call home.

Her uncle had paralyzed himself by breaking his neck while falling down a set of stairs he was climbing while vacationing in Paris. He had stepped on a discarded ho-ho on the twenty second step and plunged into the unforgiving marble stairs before rolling down them in a series of quiet thuds. His last words before he his fall were "Twenty-two." 

He was taken to the hospital immediately and was confined to room twenty-three of the hospital, where he met a kind French nurse with jet-black hair. The young French nurse cared for Margaret's poor uncle for two years after the breaking of his neck and fell in love. They married a month after he was released from room twenty-three of the French hospital. Once marrying and moving to the United States, the couple took Margaret in. They loved their dear Margaret because of their inability to produce their own children and Margaret loved them in return, learning about the world through their weathered eyes and minds.

What Margaret remembered most about her peculiar father was his odd and immense need for twenty packs of sugar before leaving on his seemingly pointless adventures. When asked by his curious daughter as to why he needed those packs of sugar, he would simply say "When things get sour, you'll always want sugar." Every night before leaving on his treks, he would hide these twenty packets of sugar in various places around Margaret's aunt's home. The morning after hiding them, he would come to his brother's home and challenge Margaret to locate all twenty of these sugar packets; stating that he could not leave until she had found every last bag. This game she played with her father will remain to be one of the very few fond memories they share with each other.

The night prior to the only trip to Margaret's trip to Brazil, Margaret's father stood in the living room of his brother's home holding not twenty but thirty packets of sugar. He had decided on bringing ten more than the normal amount of packets to accommodate for his young guest. So the next morning, Margaret packed twenty packets of sugar into her fathers bag as her father packed ten packets of sugar into little Margaret's bag, and off they went to trek through Brazil with no particular destination in mind.

For the three days preceding the breaking of her precious ribs, Margaret followed her adventuring father as he trudged gallantly through seas of mud and waves of rain drops falling from, what her young mind assumed, were the eyes of gods. When the angle in which the rain was falling caused the tears from those eyes to hit the back of her head instead of the front of her face, she would stare into them and wish for them to lead her and her adventurous father to safety.

Margaret and her father had walked for three identical days before waking up on a Thursday morning to find the waves of rain just where they left them the day before. And just like the three preceding days, Margaret and her father began to walk towards the place her father said was "just like Mom. Wonderful and beautiful." However, unbeknownst to the weary travelers, this Thursday was very much unlike the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that occurred before it.

They walked without rest for three hours before stopping on the side of an exceptionally steep hill. Margaret's father had filled the pack on his back to it’s brim and could not reach his hands over to grab the canteen himself. So Margaret, by her father’s instruction, stood on her tiptoes and reached for the canteen that was hooked to the middle of his backpack. Just as Margaret adjusted her weight to the balls of her feet, the wet earth supporting her light frame gave way, causing her to plummet away from the canteen and towards the bottom of this exceptionally steep hill her father had chosen to rest upon. At the time her weight caused the ground beneath her to break away, Margaret, with the inclusion of her pack, weighted sixty-seven pounds and two ounces. If Margaret and her pack had only weighed sixty-seven pounds and zero ounces at the time she stood on the balls of her feet and reached for her father's canteen, the ground beneath her small feet would have stayed in tact and she would have grabbed the canteen and nourished her own thirst and the thirst of her father. Margaret weighed just this amount with the exception of ten items her father had packed for her; ten packets of sugar.

So in a series of squishing sounds, she rolled and rolled to the bottom, and by the end of her two second decent, Margaret’s face and body had been covered in thick Brazilian mud and was thus rendered blind. Once she was completely blinded by the mud, gravity spent a single second rolling her even further down the hill before bringing her to a halt by smashing her two lower right ribs into a rock that protruded from the muddy river. She screamed, fell unconscious, and awoke a long while later in a make shift hospital with her father snoring by her side.

Shocked by her lack of memory and feeling of sudden displacement, she inspected her delicately healing body. As she slid her hands down to the bottom of her chest, she noticed something was missing. What she wasn't feeling were her two lower right ribs. Due to the lack of equipment in the Brazilian hospital, the doctors had to remove the broken bones and shave down the remaining nubs left by the loss of her ribs. The right side of her rib cage now ended exactly four and three quarter inches before the other side of her rib cage did. Shocked by the realization of her permanent disfigurement, she screamed once more and fell unconscious; once more.

Exactly twenty years following this realization, the difference in the lengths of Margaret’s rib cage grew to six and three quarter inches. Since the incident, she had become incredibly introverted and vowed to never again travel from her home in the city to the hills and valleys of South America with anyone; including her guilt ridden father who took no residence at all and traveled the world seemingly aimlessly soon after Margaret’s wounds had healed.

The new Margaret had also taken a liking to clothing that hung loosely over her body because of her insecurities that spawned from her disfigurement. She wore these various loose articles of clothing everywhere; especially to the downtown cafe she frequented on Saturday afternoons. It was on one of these many trips that Margaret would find her life altered once more before not only her own eyes, but the eyes of the gods she had peered into three days before she was eight years, two months, and four days old.

Reviews

[tworeeler]

fantastic start, looking forward to the first chapter. I couldn't in good conscience recommend any changes.