The storm 1

This 'story was originally drawn as a picture in coloured crayon during therapy at a very good private hospital. I think it was 2004. The music for scheherazade was played and we were all instructed to draw what images came to us as we sat at the table crayons in hand. Firstly I drew a picture of a man and a woman standing side by side at the front of a house which was built between two tall trees. There was no detail about them. Their hair seemed lank, their clothes were sameish, they were expressionless.

Once, somewhere, two people lived together in a house on the edge of a forest. In front of the house was an open field. Behind it ran a stream. The two lived quietly and peacefully side by side. They didn't talk. They didn't need to. Each knew instinctively what the other was feeling, and had a pretty good idea of what the other was up to.

They did not talk. They did not work. They did not eat. They did play doctors and nurses.(p.s. not the adult version, though.)

Steven was collecting flowers and stones, branches and feathers, things he could take back to his warm little home and arrange around the fireplace. Emily was having a bath in a pond, talking to the frog king about the importance of good quality mud. It had to be smooth, wet, brown and a bit smelly. But not too smelly. They both agreed on these matters and felt it was very important to reiterate, as often as possible, how important these matters were.

Talking to other species was different.

Emily returned to the house a bit muddy and very refreshed, but she did not expect, nor was she prepared for what she was about to see. She was just amazed at how Steven had excelled himself. Three new feathers, five stones, a special branch that pointed in at least two directions and he'd planted some tiny little flowery grasses in a pot by the window. Emily stood still and stared. It was as if she had been enchanted and turned into a flower herself. But they said nothing. Preferring to look at each other and smile. Steven, with his feathers in his hair, Emily, with a clod of mud in her ear.

The sun was reaching up to the part of the room where the wall meets the floor. That meant it was time for their daily game of cloud naming. When they played "Name that cloud" they liked to hang upside down and look through the windows. Emilys window was on the left and Stevens window was on the right. From there they hung from the rafters and pointed out to each other clouds as they came over the trees on the west side. Without actually saying something, this was what happened.

"Throat dragon with extra wings"

"George!" was the reply.

"Graph it." That was Emily, usually.

But these were no ordinary clouds today. These clouds were big, black, thunder clouds. No, this would not be any ordinary cloud-naming game. George would not be floating by today Serious preparations were in order.

Getting ready for storms was not considered to be work.