"So what do you think will happen, Zu? With no home, and no owner, just sitting in a cage forever.  Zulu paused to seriously question the fate of their friend.  He guessed friend was the correct description.  If Lisa liked him after what he had put her through then they had to be friends.

        "They might put him to sleep," Lisa's face turning a heavy frown.

        "You mean kill him?  For what?"

        "Well, that's how the dog catching system works if no one claims him within a couple of weeks of his capture."

        "Kidnap, Zu.  They kidnapped him from the neighborhood," Lisa's tone becoming angry towards the end.  From the sound in his cousin's voice, he already knew she had, and would continue to over exaggerate everything.  But he continued.

        "Excuse me cuz, kidnapped.  If no one claims Baptist within a couple of weeks after his kidnapping," Lisa's ears remained tense.  "Then they put the animal to sle .  .  .  ."  Zulu catching his word choice to continue, ".  .  .  . Then they're going to kill Baptist."  Lisa threw her hands over her face as if she would have to witness the death herself.

        "It's not right cuz, but what can we really do?  No one really liked the dog except for you, and I never really knew the animal."

        "No, Zu.  No, Zu," sort of confusion, and denial mixed into something similar to defiance.  "We can't just let them kill him.  He belongs to the neighborhood.  He belongs to us, Zu."

        "No.  What you really mean is that you don't want anything to actually die.  Especially some animal you know.  And I agree, but what can we do?"

        "We can claim him, Zu.  No wait.  I can claim him as my own, and jut take him home with me."

        "I don't know, Lisa."  The conversation was always important, and serious whenever he used her name.  "What would auntie say about a dog, and not just any dog, but Baptist?  You already know how auntie feels about cats, and I figure Baptist is way worse than any cat."

        "This is true.  This is true.  I'll just have to come up with something."

        "Well, time has run out.  He was kidnapped three days ago.  So that will probably give you about another thirty, forty days.  And you know your mother, not even to mention your father."

        "Chill, Zu.  Chill.  It'll be a push over.  I'll just have to put on my best, and put it to the test."

        "Okay, cousin, whatever you say.  I'm with you."  Baptist, and Lisa.  The thought was, hmmmmm, different.

        The young girl steadied the motion of her eyes with the movements of her cousin's eyes; back, and forth, right to left.  Both children drifting into a quiet silence that didn't include a single thought.  Nothing.  Again a stillness.  A stare.  Lisa with her eyes open, closed to the bright light of the sun.  Zulu with his mind open, closed to the thoughts of his lost sight.  A state of nothingness created where everything could happen, and grow.

        And from a couple miles away, both children could hear where they were or where they weren't.  A mother, alone, struggling with the loading, and unloading of heavy bags, child in hand.  Another wandering aimlessly through the streets; lost and confused, not about the future, but about the past.  Maybe both children could hear Baptist bark in the cramped space of a cage with no freedom, but rather death as a future.  They could hear a different type of struggle that appeared beyond their reach.

        Yet in life, Zulu was blind, and Lisa was thirteen, and both were in their own way, everything.

        "Cuz, you really believe I'll be able to see one day?  That the sun will help, and just like that my sight will come to me?"  Lisa slid across the wood floor, propping up next to her cousin, both touching at the shoulders, and the head.  Necks tilted slightly. Same thought, same time, same action.

        "Listen Zu, it's going to happen.  I just know it will.  I believe it.  Granddaddy believes it.  Granddaddy may be a little crazy, but we both know I'm not."  Zulu turned away from the connection of the two heads to look blindly into his cousin's face.  Zulu thought she was a little crazy.

        "Well, at least not at this time I'm not.  I just believe it.  It's going to happen. And you have to believe it, too.  So when it does happen, when you are able to see, you'll be ready, and prepared.  It won't be a miracle.  It would have been a promise," Lisa's last words swaying the young child's head against the wall, the thought that he had a chance to see for the first time.  He would see one day, and he would be prepared, feeling the shadow of the sun, and its heat cut across his feet.

        "Lisa?"

        "Yeah, Zu."

        "What does the sun look like?"

        "Come on, Zu.  You know what the sun looks like.  Its round like your coat button or bottle top, except way bigger."  He smiled to himself.

        "I know that, cuz.  I mean what does the sun really look like?"  Lisa listened to the change in the conversation.

        "How was it created?  Where does it come from, if it comes from anywhere?"  There was a sudden rush of question flood his mind; the release of thousands of different colored marbles spilling out of a closet having just been unlocked.  The questions spilled forward.

        "Did it create itself?  How many other suns are there?  If the sun is the sun, then what is the moon?  Will we eventually burn up from the heat of the sun?"  Lisa relaxed in the cushioning of questions she did not yet know the answers to.

        "If the sun is able to help me with my blindness, then can we help the sum with something?  And if we can help the sun, what can we help it with?  Is the sun a man or a woman?  Ohhhhhh!"  The young child picked up in excitement.  

        "We can create a sun, Lisa.  Well, if mom and dad let us," the excitement in his voice detouring into a downward spiral with the thought of his parents.  Lisa sat in thought at the last statement, even sounding like a command.

        Repeating the statement to herself, "We can create a sun."

        She stood up in the cold blood on the floor, her stance slipping in the mixture of blood, and stained wood.  The floor looked old, and decrepit.  The walls were ragged with carpeted covering.  Vanity was somewhere deep in her mind.  A place she had never seen before.  A place she never knew existed until the present had arrived.  It had always existed even if she had never acknowledged it.  And as she stood, and stretched from the gripping thought of death, her legs ached.  Another pestered thought.  The blood dripped slowly from her sagging shirt, reemerging itself back onto the floor.  Because of the stain of the carpeted walls, the blood, in its illusion, seemed everywhere.  But after careful study, Vanity noticed that there was maybe a single cup full.  Most of which she was standing directly in the pool of.  Another thought, she supposed, as her actions in the small spaced room began to reveal itself.

        She was in control, yet the control meant nothing in her panic, and suffocation, and her excitement was a control of no value.  She had just wanted out of wherever she was, and her mannerisms had become more of an affliction to hinder.  Stuttering in stance under the smooth of the wood, there was another thought, deciding to check herself through the fear for the extrusion of blood.

        Her hands fluttered to the middle of her chest.  She had remembered some sort of pain there previously; a knife stab that left her alive.  There was only the heat of her skin embracing the fingers' touch of her hands.  Her hands next fumbled her face.  Nervously, she slowly checked her lips, the sides of her face, rubbing the palms of her hands in circular motion against the exposed flesh.

        She blinked several times to find any type of pain.  No scrapes or scars that would allow the escape of blood, finally checking the top of her head, and ears.  Both hands worked nervously at what they might discover as each finger dug deep into the holes of her ears, and each hand exposing smooth flesh to the stormy eyes that burned fire and smoke.

        She stared down at the blood on the floor, slipping to catch her balance.  Breathing in the fumes of suffocation, she felt the pulse of her entire body.  There was no pain anywhere.

        "Where is the blood coming from ?!!!!"  A lost in emotion.  The screamed statement meant nothing to the small room that housed her.  If she was talking to herself, why scream?  Only in the mind could one constantly re-awaken to the same cycle.

        "Blood, and blood, and more blood.  Lots of blood."  The voice sounded crazy; a quick pace of psychotic speech.  One could imagine the wide eyed stare of Vanity into the four corners of the room, her hands flailing wildly about her sides as if not in control.  Her mind was too complex, and frantic, taking over in action from the snail paced logic of reasoned sanity having completely been lost in a state of disillusion.  She was sane.  She was very sane.  It was just that in her reasoned grasp, the fact that she was going to die, yet not dead, a rationale for a sane course of action, did not appear.  Or rather, it appeared to not be there.

        Vanity's arms waved wildly through the room, striking herself in the face.  There was more time.  Her mind would permit more time.  A psychotic nature that shadowed patience, and that she could be patient from herself and the room, and the thoughts, and her breath.  The illusions all meant nothing, and through it she must be patient.  Something she needed not practice because the time was at hand.  Standing in darkness, there was not light.  There was no path and exit.  Patience.  There could only be patience.  Her arms continued to wave wildly about her sides.  Maybe she would not make it.  The room remained motionless.  

        The small cub was white.  Not clear white like the old owl that sat perched over the clan of grizzly bears from season to season.  No.  The grizzly cub was a pearl white as her fur blended into the dark black of her litter, her coat already dirty from the soil of the ground.  The elder grizzly, the mother, sat on her bottom in amazement as she watched the funny colored cub roll around.  The litter totaled three cubs in all.  A large litter for one female grizzly to have, but she had sleep long months, and had ate extremely well.  The mother was five years in adult age, this being only her second birth.  Her last litter had also been very successful, giving birth to two black males.  They grow so fast, and are extremely intelligent, the first males having left after the second winter hibernation.  

        The female cub rolled off her brothers to wobbly stand on her legs, her hind legs fragile in support of her bottom.  The pressure finally being too much to withstand, the only female in the litter fell on the snarl of the others.  

        "Completely white," the mother thought, staring in a peculiar kind of stare.  Under the weight of the female, the two males stood distinctly out in sight, the female resembling that of the far away stars in the great distance of the sky.  

        But as time would past, the female cub would grow as big as her mother had grown, and as colorful as the white object that came with the night.  The black grizzly could feel the gnawing pull of a mouth against her nipples.  She had yet to think about the pain, and aggravation in feeding a litter of three.  She counted them again, stopping at the female directly beside her stomach, single drops of milk blending into the fur.  It had become a habit by the mother of stopping, and staring.  Going back as far as she could remember, past her mother, and even in dealing with other clans of grizzly, whether they were from across the mountain or dwelled specifically in the green of the forest, had she never counted, saw, heard or watched that of a white grizzly.  This was the first, and to a mother; an only, the white cub sucking on a nipple that was bigger than her.  And she had two more to feed.  This winter was going to be of a different kind, the sun seeming to disappear, totally covered by the rising of the mountaintops.  The dark would arrive soon.  

        As a cub amongst her brothers, she would watch the only constant reminder of her difference, and its massive size as compared to every other thing that existed.  And she too would grow to an enormous size, silently standing amongst the vast space of everything else, screaming in the appearance of a different.  Something new and exciting, and she had grown big quickly, larger than all of her brothers who had long since wandered deep into the mountains.  She had grown larger than her mother, which was sort of a surprise because even to a grown oak, her mother was huge.  She had grown big as a baby oak freshly sprouted from that of a pine seed, yet she had not quite been able to explode to that of the white star that dimmed its silence in the midst of the fading sky.  It was just as well, the forest already too crowded with the constant familiar faces; some being friendly, and some not so friendly.  Her head sniffing up to the faded star in the sky, and how would she really feed a body the size of that?  The cool of the wild air resting as wet moisture on the black of her nose.  She probably would have to eat an entire lake to keep herself fed, and nourished.

        So in the land of vast beauty, and glamour, she was second best which was not so bad, and she loved it, stopping to smell the dandelions.  The splendid smell of yellow lions faded into a dull clear scent heightened with the temperature of the sun.  She inhaled deeply through the moisture of her nose, the tiny bee feeling the pull of the inhale.  Another obstacle in his daily day to day works.  First, he was late in clearing his side of the day's dandelions.  The sun had totally disappeared. making the usual sweet smell of work, boring, dull, unscented; basically work.  And now he had to deal with the interruption of some funny colored .  .  .  .

        The bumblebee flowed with the wave of air inhaled by the grizzly, finally fluttering his wings, sidestepping the enormous nostril of the funny animal, hovering troublesomely just above the animal's head.  The female paid no attention to her small friend, sniffing for the sweet smell she so desperately wanted to enjoy.  A good scent of dandelions followed by a huge a meal always put her to sleep for hours at a time, and even during the most peaked hours of the day, and even when the sun was at its highest.

        The bee watched in disgust as the huge animal snatched the flowers from the dirt, the roots of the small plants dangled from her mouth.  The grizzly found little amusement, and taste in the flowers that tasted like grass.  The dirt, unlike the flower, was always difficult to swallow.  When wet, it seldom swallowed with the rest of the plant, causing her to suffer through the grit on her tongue or the spitting of rocks that had no taste at all.  If not for the roots of the plant, the roots containing the healthier of the juices, she would leave the hapless flower alone.  

        The bee continued to watch the animal chew slowly on his unfinished work, finally concluding that work was over for the day, flying off through the dark of the late afternoon.

        The grizzly looked up.  Just beyond the last set of staggered oaks, and she would be on top of the river with the splashing water drop.  She could hear the splash of water through the trees, and night air.  It had begun faint in her ears, a little distance back along the trail, increasing in sound as the trail led closer; the sound of the splash fading with the sight of the trail, picking up in intensity again as she bruised through the irritating thorns that lived on the low bark of the older oak.  They were always very painful when walking long walks at a time, sometimes staining her fur with blood.  But the scrapes, and scratches were not totally bad, especially how they soothed when healed to relax her toes, and shoulders.  It would only be a real bother when the fur actual ripped out with the little pieces of her flesh; that took longer to heal.  

            The female ripped at the underneath of  pesky growth, tearing the vines from the bark of the young oaks, the pull of her legs; front and back, becoming more powerful with each ling stride to a resting place.  She would soak in the water after eating as the thorns began to appear in less numbers which meant one thing; food.  The last covering of the great oaks opened as a gate to an abundance of the splendor the river had to offer to the hungry beast, pausing in thought to absorb the awesome sight of her conquest.  

            Something wasn't right.  The river was there.  The trees sat as usual.  The moon hovered directly overhead, but .  .  .  . The grizzly turned to the loud splash noise.  The waterfall was on the wrong side, and the water was running cross current instead of down stream.  In her laziness to stop, and smell the flowers, she had wandered too far off trail, looking at the waterfall, puzzled.  

            The best fish, and crab always lived up stream with the flow of the water, scanning the overpass, looking up the steep cliff into the air that created the waterfall.  She would have to  backtrack through the deepest part of the forest, and curve back around onto the trail to follow out to the top of the river.  The idea to scale the cliff from the front as she often did with the strenuous climbs of the mountain presenting itself.  

            "Not possible," she concluded, dipping her paw into the water's calm.  Once the water came out of its dunk of the waterfall, it died completely, the wind causing a slight ripple in the smooth layer of the waters.  

            From across the other side of the water, the cliff appeared to be more slope than drop making the climb up quicker, and she could tell the moon had moved slightly in the sky.  It was getting later into the night.  Even though she could hunt at any time, she couldn't necessarily sleep at any time, and when sleep hit her, she wanted to be somewhere relaxed, and secure.  To walk the slope of the other side of the waterfall would mean she would have to swim across, removing her paw from the water as the sting from the salt seeped into the small cuts.  And it was too late to get wet, having to sleep through the night wet, and uncomfortable, and not being able to dry until sometime in the early afternoon.  To sleep wet was to sleep stupid.  She would simply have to walk the trail, and in just a little bit more time, she would be home now totally covered from head to foot by bush, and oaks.  The female paused at the gated edge, staring at the leap of waters over the edge of the fall dropping into its bottom catch.  She noticed how the waters spread, and separated individually soaring as if they would develop wings, and fly as the birds to not fully develop, crashing to a small grave.  The main splash of waterfall that she constantly heard from miles away was the spill of the top of the water over the mountain's cliff into the bottom of the lake.  

        It was a constant pour into the bottom, and never once did she see a break in the drop, thinking about the original source of the river that flooded top, and bottom.  The grizzly suddenly seemed to realize that she didn't know much, and that she was fairly young in a place that was older than all of what she knew, and all of who she knew, and all of who knew her.  But why it had not dawned on her to walk up the stream of the river to find the source of where the water originated was beyond her.  Of course, she figured, the source of the river would have also the source of everything else, and the best of what she loved.  

        The female checked to see how deep the water went just underneath the splash of the waterfall, and she would check for the source tomorrow.  She meant really check, counting seven seconds from the time the water dropped, reemerging to top surface.  It might actually be deep enough for her to plunge if she could ever get enough nerve.  

        The fall from the cliff's edge of rocks that existed in the middle of the rapid current looked more fun, and exhilarating from the bottom than form the top.  From the covering of the trees at the bottom, it looked as if she would have time, while in mid air, to spread her legs like wings to let the wind catch her belly.  To see how the birds did it, counting again the reemerging of the water to the surface edge; eight seconds this time.  The discovery of the source would give her something to actually do.  Some real work for a three year old of the world, and that the aimless wandering she was accustomed too would end.  Her life's purpose would present itself in the finding of the source

        Eight seconds again she counted, turning back into the struggle of the forest.  The throne bushes, and oak trees appeared visible everywhere as if initially invisible, appearing to the animal as a welcomed member of the family.  A hectic collective of madness in the arrangement of trees, bushes, leaves, and dirt mounds strangling her thoughts of peace.  Back to the grind of the hunt; her life daily, but the female smiled.  She believed that was about to change.         Vision remained quiet in the water as she watched the young child again dive curiously into his task.

        "He had really heard her," she thought, his full attention off of her clumsiness.  What was worse in the river was that she had to be careful in her actions.  Not for the young child's prying eyes, but from his prying ears.  The dirt from the underground earth caked in large amounts from the extended tips of Vision's hair.  She could feel the brush of the great oak root nudge her lower back just above the water's surface.  And she watched Zulu.

        The young child, turning his back toward her completely, placed his hands, and curiosity into the contents of his catch.  Her chance was now to make a move out of the river back onto solid ground.  She could feel her toes grab firmly on top the mud of the water.  Pressing down with the muscles of her bottom half, she twirled, turning a complete circle, to stare the edge of the shallow ground as the droplets of dirt splashed into the ripple of the water already created.  She felt nasty, and the dirt weighed heavy on her shirt, heavy on her hair, heavy on her mind.  

        The chubby arms reached over the top of the ground, fingertips just barely wrapping the giant root of the great oak.  From her position, the pull up would include more dirt and mud, dragging her over the edge of ground that pathed into grass.  Her grip was strong on the root, looking for any below the mass of earth to further position her feet, a crevice of jutted rock appearing as leverage to better lift onto level ground.

        "Maybe I could roll over the edge?" she thought, the scrapping of her nipples or belly seeming the most sensitive spots on her body, and she would have to watch her face on the pull, eyeing the mound of dirt that appeared over the edge.  The strain in the first push off the river's bottom had her face, and eyes barely above the ground of the forest.   Her legs kicked in sporadic motion with no support to further the small climb, her body weight supported by the tight grip of hands around the small base of root that dived underground.  Her feet found nothing.  Vision dangled haplessly in the shallow of the river as her body hugged the wall of the muddy earth that rounded into level dirt.  Letting go, she realized that she was indeed strong, but having giving into her own weight, not that strong.  Her sinking feet dug into the mud of the underwater surface.  She could feel the ooze from soaked toes, and rocks that rested just underneath the most sensitive spots of her feet in a continued float above the water's surface.  A second try would be a first best.  It would be the same approach except this time with more power, and pull, and lift, inhaling deeply.  From across the water the small remained busy in his task, unsuspecting of the quiet sounds that filled the night's silence.

        Whispering, "Let me try again."  There was no reply.  She could see pulling herself out of the dangers of the terror in the river.  Her life was on the line, and she was a heroine who had been captured.  She had seconds to escape, glancing across the water's reflection, that this peaceful eye painting could ever be considered evil.  Pressing stronger, grabbing the root of the oak tree, the feel was strong against the rough root texture.  Both feet dug into the soft moisture of the underground earth, her position holding firm.  Her hands pressed the tree root.  She had been stretched long, and thin, but was out of the water, her next push clearing its edge onto solid ground.  Vision breathed in deep to block the dirty feel of mud.  

        Another heavy push, the underground collapsed in layers.  Her breast having already caught the ground's edge slamming into the mud, mud covering the entirety of her face.  All she could was smile as the mud dropped in lumps, rolling to pull her legs.  She had escaped the river to fall into a mud pile.  She next had to escape the great oak, and she would be free, turning her head away from the commotion of Zulu to eye the tree.  For some reason, the great oak had lost a little of its hypnotic stare that made a person pause, smiling to herself again, relaxing the stressed tension in her body.  Vision stared across the water at the young child remaining face deep in the crab bucket, unaware.  And she sat, and watched as the mud dried tightly around her neck, and cheeks.  It was humiliating, but satisfying to the soul.  She wasn't dead, she thought.  Now how would she get cleaned, eyeing her sandals that were the only thing personal belongings that had remained dry.  The young girl turned again to eye Zulu.

        .  .  .  . "You can move a little closer, Zu.  You're almost there."  Lisa sidestepped the small forward steps of her cousin, giving him room.  The mud sucked under the pressure of his motion.  

        "Do you see any, cuz?  Are there any flying around?"  Silence.

        "No, Zu.  It's clear.  You can even touch the hive.  I believe they call it a hive.  I don't really know what it's called," talking to herself.  Zulu paused briefly.  He was about to touch an actual real live wasp's nest, his cousin guiding him by the shoulders, and elbows.  He could feel the brush of bush against his forearms, the tension in his cousin's motion making him all the more nervous.  He might have been even a little afraid, stumbling in mud to lean forward, the staff catching his weight.  Lisa held on to his shoulders, grabbing the arm of hers with the other.  

        "Come on, Zu.  That was close.  You have to be careful.  They're wasp in there, and we don't want wake any up unintentionally."

        "My fault, cuz.  It was a natural mistake.  A natural mistake."

        "Okay now.  Be very careful.  We're right in front of the nest.  The hive I mean.  A wasp's hive is like a pine comb with a bunch of tiny holes at the top.  The small holes are where the wasp enters, and exits.  Some hives can be about the size of a softball.  This hive, in particular, is rather small, Zu."  Lisa paused in thought.

        "It's probably about the size of one of your golf balls.  Maybe two of your golf balls put together."  Zulu's excitement becoming exaggerated with the vivid description.

        "What color is it like?"

        "Hold on.  Hold on," Lisa sensing the reckless anticipation in his voice. 

        "It's kind of difficult to describe as being one particular color, Zu."  Lisa knowing this was the most difficult part of any explanation.

        "You know how you always see black.  You know a definite black.  I mean.  It's strictly black.  A little light, light black or dark black.  Black."

        "Yeah, yeah."

        "Alright.  Well a wasp hive is sort of in that direction, but not."

        "Just tell me the color, cuz.  I mean all I know is something you call black so it doesn't really matter."

        "Well you asked didn't you?  So I'm going to explain it to you.  It's not the color you see.  I guess it's a lot lighter.  Almost like sunshine.  Adults would call it some fancy name like caramel tan or opaque brown.  I would say the color was brown.  A light brown that was dirty.  Oh, I know, Zu.  It's the same color as pie crust.  I know that doesn't help you any, but it does my imagination a world of good."  Zulu tried to imagine what caramel tan or pale brown looked like.  She had said pie crust.  Non of the those words registered anything in his memory, so he just imagined.  

        "You ready to touch it?"

        "Yeah, cuz because all the colors you just said didn't do anything for me."  Lisa grabbed his arms from off her shoulders, steadying his hands through the air.  His fingers first felt what he assumed where bushes, his cousin nudging him closer through the rustle of leaves, resting them on the brittle surface that felt like a ice cream cone.  

        "You feel it, Zu?  There it is," letting go his tiny fingers.  

        "You feel the holes in the comb, Zu?  That's where they enter, and exit."  Zulu felt the release of his cousin's hand.  He could actually feel the skin of the hive, and the small size holes the existed throughout.

        "Yeah, cousin, and you say this is what they call a hive?" his touch becoming stronger with each feel.

        "Careful, Zu, for real.  You don't want to wake any .  .  .  ."  It was too late.  The wasp had awakened to the shake of his fingers, darting out of her nesting comb to hover directly in front of the young girl, instantly silencing her words.  A second passed as she, and the wasp stared at each other.  Lisa could see the anger in the wasp's eyes having been awaken from a deep sleep, and knew the feeling.  Many a days her parents had interrupted her sleep, and she could tell by the stare that she was angry.  

        "Awwwwwwwwwwww!" was all Zulu heard.  Not a "Run, Zu.  A wasp."  Or a "Zulu run, a wasp."  Not that he could really run, but he could have at least attempted a fast walk.  So no, there was none of that.  All he had heard, with his hands extended forward, was a terrifying scream as if his cousin was screaming for her life to be saved while he stood standing in the same spot.  The mud quickly sucked in, and out under the running footsteps of the young girl.  And then at first, a distinct buzzing sound to his ear; an irritation of sorts, but he listened.  He felt the buzzing wiz by his nose, slowing up in the other ear.  The noise had become indeed irritating, yet because of the difference in sound, keenly pleasant to listen to.  Funny he didn't know his fate.  

        The wasp circled the peculiar specimen that stood directly in front of her hive.  That it was possibly a child of young age, and that he was probably the culprit who had rustled her out of her rest was a mute point.

        She circled again the head a final time, stopping just to the front of his face.  Everything had moved quickly from his cousin's scream to the buzzing in the ear to a final pause.  The wasp could contain her attack no longer.  It was useless to fly after the chubby fat girl, the wasp thought to herself, too much effort.  She felt the eye contact had been enough, but this one here hadn't even moved.  He was the one.

        Lisa finally stopped in the tree overpass of bamboo, realizing, "Zulu."

        By the time she arrived back a short distance from her cousin, it had already been too late.  He could feel the sharp pain start first in his neck, then his hand.  He hadn't known whether he had actually been stung twice by the same wasp or stung two times by different wasp.  But the pain was worse than real.  It was pain.  And just as the pain reached the pain, and the tears started to flow, "A wasp, Zulu.  Run," grabbing her cousin's arm, pulling him as fast as both children could possibly move.

        Her words made no sense at first through the pain of stings, but as the mud became solid dirt, and the tears flowed, Zulu began to understand that he had been stung by a wasp, no longer dragging his feet, but at full pace with his cousin, the staff held tight in both hands.

        Staring down the face of the crab bucket, thinking back, remembering that he had been stung three times.  Once in his hand and twice in his neck.  All three marks having left huge whelps, and lumps as a reminder of the deadly ground of a wasp's hive.  Now knowing a wasp hive to actually be a honeycomb, but only after weeks of vomiting, high fevers, chills, and shivers, and trips to the doctor for more pain from the deadly doctor's needle.  It had been rough, but he believed it had been rougher for Lisa who had accepted full responsibility for both their mishaps.  He remembered Lisa's parents punishing her so bad that she had even confessed, and accepted punishment for the wasp too, but once the pain, and punishment were over, the love returned.  And they never did figure out whether it had been one or more wasp that had attacked him.  He understood that he had withstood the pain, and lived, and he was proud of it.  After all, his cousin had yet to know what it felt like to be stung by a wasp.  The feat haunted her so bad that she once had even dared herself to be stung purposefully just to experience what he had went through only to be reminded of the doctor's needles, and the dare faded into a memory, moving his hands slowly into the interior of the bucket.  The noise in the bottom corner of the bucket faded into nothing.  Whatever he had captured in the net could see him coming, and the approaching of his hand.

        Zulu steadied through the nervousness to pause in thought.  He was focused, remembering the actual shape, and size of the crab;s claw.  It had been big for a crab, but not big as compared to his hands, and the claws were not sharp, and pointed, but more ridged, and dull.  Depending on how fast the crab could open, and close them would would determine if the ridged grooves would break the surface of his skin.  In the end, he told himself, it could hurt no worse than the wasp's attack, deciding he would move slowly to feel for the crab.

        "It won't hurt," he told himself, something he could show his cousin when it was all over.  Next time he would bring her,  and let her have the enjoyment of being her eyes.  

        His hands continued in movement to the bottom of the bucket .  .  .  . page continue