From: Qyzida  (Original Message)

Sent: 6/1/2007 8:00 PM

The fourth day without electricity, without telephone. Your water is running low. No emergency people have come. Your fuel is running low and you are looking at the furniture with an ax nearby, wondering if you still have to make payments on it.   Most of the neighbors have gone or started looting the empty houses. The storms have settled but the sky remains dark and even at noon it is no brighter than twilight. There is still no rain and dust and dirt cover everything outside.   The kids are scared and crying and the elderly lady that lived two doors down has ventured out in the street holding a photo album and dragging a grocery cart full of  mementos and food. A crowd full of angry shouting youngsters come running towards her....   WHAT DO YOU DO?????

 

From:PredawnLadyKate

Sent: 6/6/2007 8:25 AM

We tried to get a restful sleep but during the night a howling wind swept through making the animals and trees all around us stir.  We could hear branches hitting the house making it sound like someone beating at the doors and windows to come in. The dogs were growling lightly to let us know their concern.  Finally a bit of a light worked it way through the windows, still quite hard to figure out what time of the day it is with the semi darkness in the sky. I am trying to make the days seems as normal as possible because I don't want the animals to feel there is anything to fear, right now all we have is each other to depend on.  After breakfast, oatmeal and coffee, Den and I make our way to the window to see if we can go outside today.  We really want to make our way to at least the neighbor up the road.  We all live quite far from each so we will have to saddle up the horse so we don't want to try it if there may be danger. The winds were still blowing not as bad as the night before,  you could see where the dust had been moved like snow drifts.  We decided that it looked okay, but we got a rifle just in case. Covering our faces with some dish towels we headed out the door.  As we stood on  our deck and looked around our beautiful green world was no more, lots of the trees were broken snapped at their heads, and the grasses were heavy with a gray dust. I grabbed the broom and started to sweep the dust making a path, it was so light it floated filling the air around us.  Den looked at me and said that might not be good to distrub it to much we don't know what's in it and we could become sick. We walked to the barn slowly listening for anything.  I could here my dogs barking in the house but I knew they were only upset because they couldn't come out with us. When we reached the barn we went in the small side door, there inside the horses and the other animals were waiting for their feed.  They all looked good, acting like nothing was wrong.  We fed them all, brushed down our mare and cleaned up the saddle and bridle, got her ready to go. I was really worry letting him go but it was to important to see if our neighbors were ok. As he rode off up the road, I knew standing around doing nothing was not going to help us at the end of the day so inside the barn I went.  Going about my chores as I did before the earth had it's disastrous changes, cleaning up after the animals and collecting the eggs.  Thank goodness the hens are still laying, but I thought I need to talk with Den about letting some of the hens hatch their eggs because we won't be able to purchase new birds now like we use to. Once I was done in the barn, I made my way back to the house, still looking around in total shock as to what it looked like.  There were no birds chirping, not even a cricket, my flowers were broken and I didn't see any bees or other creatures working around the plants.  My apple trees were just blossoming, my thoughts sadden me because now would we have an apple crop this fall, and if they did grown to fruit could we eat it. Well in the house I go, I know I am going to journal the days to come but for now I have to get the house clean, and take inventory of what we have.  Once I am done that I am sure Den will be back with news and hungry for something to eat. Light a candle to the Divine give thanks for another day and ask for guidance on the difficult days to come.

Day Four:

 

We can't see the sunlight anymore. The sand from the nearby desert is blowing in, covering the plants and trees in a fine dust, making it hard to breathe. We pulled the fire pit inside so that we can cook without going outside, we just need to keep the windows up to ventilate the smoke out. We were running low on water, so the guys got things together, and decided to go out and get some from the nearby store, hoping there wasn't going to be trouble. Everyone in the neighborhood seems to be doing okay, though one family left from next door, to head toward a family residence nearby. They gave us permissiong to raid the house for anything they left behind if there was an emergency, which was very kind of them. When the guys were coming back up, the little old lady from down the street wandered outside. A bunch of rough and tumble guys from down the street went toward her, so I couldn't help but run outside with the shotgun. I kept it aimed at them as Cheryl, my future mother-in-law came right behind to grab her up and take her inside with her. She has a talent for caring for the elderly, so she was glad to have her there, even though we're short on supplies. The guys finally came up and the group ran off, hopefully for good. We were so wary of everyone today, and carried the weaponry, because we had heard gunshots last night, and we wanted to take every precaution we could. I'm wondering is we'll see any family, or friends any time soon. It's a good thing we saved a bunch of the herbs from outside, and dried them, some of them are medicinal and others for food. I hope to see sunlight, or moonlight soon, though I doubt it.

 

Shadow