Stacy--Part Thirty-Six

Splog # 130

Thirty-Six

   Stacy watched the ants. It was like a black river flowing through the grass. As her eyes followed the stream of insects, she remarked on the colors that seemed to glow along the line as it poured through her feet. She also noticed that it was heading in the direction she wanted to follow. At least she hoped so. After running from the tiger and sprawling on her hands and knees, she was no longer sure which direction was which. The cauldron was nowhere in sight and there was nothing else  she could use for a landmark. With a sigh, she started following the file of ants, walking carefully to one side and keeping her eyes fixed on the ground in an effort to avoid stepping on any of the tiny creatures. Her left foot and her right knee were both feeling sensitive so she walked with a somewhat stilted gait, trying to keep her weight off her left heel and to keep her right leg always slightly bent. The ants moved on her left and she followed the line of black  (and occasionally glowing colors) out of the corner of her eye. She walked cautiously, hoping that the exercise would be good for her ankle and knee and, if it made them feel better, she'd soon be able to hurry along instead of moving in this awkward and frustrating shuffle. Concentrating as she was, with her head bent down and her eyes examining the grass in front of her black sneakers, besides watching the column of ants from the corner of her left eye and trying to avoid causing pain to her left ankle and right knee, she could easily have fallen in when she suddenly came upon a crevasse that cut across the plain directly in front of her. She pulled herself up short and her first thought was to observe how the column of ants would handle this abrupt interruption of their route. What she saw was a sort of ordered confusion. Some ants were simply continuing on and marching straight down the vertical side of the gash in the earth. Others had turned in her direction and were now swarming around and over her sneaker-clad foot, which made her rather uncomfortable, as she didn't see how she could move without stepping on some and thereby crushing them. Basically, however, it seemed that the column itself had merely turned to the left on encountering the vast expanse of nothingness and was continuing on toward its destination, whatever that might be. Stacy, now afraid to move her feet, leaned forward a little to see what caused the obstruction. As she gazed into the cut in the earth, she found it to be rather like a valley. Both sides of it, the side she stood over and the one opposite, seemed to fall straight down for a number of feet and then slope less dramatically to meet together at the bottom. The distance seemed just enough to frustrate any idea she might have of covering it on her own power and with her legs not in peak condition. Even without her injuries, she wasn't sure if she could jump across the ravine, and the other side looked like simply loose earth with nothing to grasp if a handhold were required. If the sides had sloped from the top, it might not be too hard to maneuver her way to the bottom. But the sheer drop didn't look like something she could accomplish without further injury. And so, now what? Her attempt to reach the cages and do something for the children had met with nothing but interruption, confusion and mishap. And now it seemed almost impossible to continue. She looked down at the ants. "Well, where do I go from here?" Surprisingly, the ants may have had an answer, for while she'd been contemplating the obstacle in her path, the ants that hadn't turned left or marched over the precipice had been forming themselves into a ragged circle and had begun travelling around her feet. She watched them rather amazed by such an odd action. There were hundreds of ants circling her feet like children around a maypole. They were moving close together mainly in one direction, but occasionally she'd catch sight of one or two moving against the tide. Stacy was a little frustrated and a lot confused. She looked up into the white sky and, without thinking, took a deep breath and yelled out, "What now?" Of course there was no response and as the sound died away, she looked back to her feet and found what might have been an answer to her question. The ants were no longer moving in a circle.