No Shelter

When I was just young my mother told me about the scariest thing in the world. And I had yet to encounter it in all my life. But I had always had shelter. I was the lucky breed.

I carried my entire home on my back as I traveled the world. Nothing could stop me. But this new place. I had never seen anything like it. There were things I had never seen before. I came out of the forest and through a grassy meadow and suddenly I was gliding across a kind of earth I had never seen. It was white and solid. It wasn't real somehow. There was nothing fresh. The smell was terrible and as I moved on across it for a long time, I noticed giants.

Many of them stepped over me, not noticing me. But it was frightening. Where had they come from?

My mom had warned me not to go too far, but here I was. Way too far away from home. I had wandered and now I was in the land of giants. Weird looking creatures that had odd shapes. The sounds coming from them were deafeningly loud and made me want to go faster. No matter how fast I went they were so much quicker. Their long limbs gave them the advantage over me.

They didn't seem interested in me though and that was a good thing. Who knew what they could or would do with someone like me? Could they eat me? Would they want to? The end came nearer as I saw the other side of the vast bare whiteness that had exposed me to the giants. There was no cover here but on the other side I could see an oasis. A safety. I could hide in nature. I was almost there, I could smell the earth and it's wonderful coolness that would embrace me.

But then a monster stopped in front of me, looking down at me with a wicked grin. He bent down and made some noises. The other giants brushed him off but he reached for me nonetheless. His limbs wrapped around me and picked me up just as I was almost to safety.

I screamed but there was no one to hear me. No one to rescue me. I just gave up. Hopeless and scared I just wiggled in his grasp as he carried me. He carried me a distance I could never come back from. So far from my home. From my family.

He shoved me in a giant box and closed it up on me. I tried to hold on to the bottom to keep from sliding and tumbling around but there was nothing to grab onto. After what felt like an eternity I felt him sit the box down somewhere.

Finally, I could rest without being tossed around. The lid opened and his ugly face peered in at me. His mouth opened and sounds came from it. He laughed hard. He didn't seem nice or kind. The laughter sounded like it came from someone who finally had a victim too small to fight back.

Then I saw it, the glass full of white stuff. The big grains of white that my mom had described to me.

"If it touches your skin, it will be the most painful death that anyone like us could ever experience. I have only heard stories but I know it, I see it in my nightmares," she had said.

And here I was face to face with someone who had a big giant sized jar of it. The jar was ten times my size and it was full of the white stuff. The lid of it was silver like a rock at the bottom of a creek when the sunlight hits it just right. There were several holes in the lid to allow the deadly powder to fall through. Onto me.

He tilted it and the white stuff came raining down at me. I screamed and screamed, waiting for the pain.

Then I woke up. Cold and dark, I looked around. There was my mom asleep on a leaf. It was just a nightmare.

I was still at home in the forest. Right where a snail should be, safely far away from any salt.