"C" is for...

Cottar
by Rain Whitney

The storm swept in with it's bristling wind, tearing at bushes, trees, brambles and wildflowers on the once well kept tenant farm and vacant countryside.

A young peasant woman struggled slowly along the road, the rags wrapped on her feet heavy and infused with mud, muck. and blood. She wasn't certain how far she had traveled but she knew she was close.

When she saw the castle at the crossroads, above the fields of heather, she ran off the road, climbing over the last rock wall to her childhood home. Her heart was beating time to an old folk song singing in her head that she had learned from her parents and sang with her siblings. Tears wet her hopeful, happy eyes as the little cottage and farm appeared like her dreams.

The sickening smell of death hung low in the air as the rain ceased and scavengers came back to claim the dead. Her joy had turned to mourning screams and digging graves for her dear family, all taken by the insidious sickness that was the Black Plague.

"A happy family is but an earlier Heaven!"

~George Bernard Shaw~

cottar - a medieval peasant inhabiting a cottage

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