Friday June 13th, 2014

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about: the bite. 

We spent the morning picking strawberries. By 'we' I mean myself, Maja, and both of Kat's parents. Genevieve has left us for a week to attend her cousin's graduation in Kamloops and then visit her mother in Vancouver but I look forward to her return.

If for no other reason than to tell her she missed the day we picked 159 pints of strawberries.

Mine:

Unfortunately Max and Kat were not around to experience the bountiful harvest either, as they were up in Oliver's emergency room for most of the morning.

We were concerned that he was having an allergic reaction to eating those very same strawberries, as his cheek was red and there was swelling around his eye. He hadn't had any since Wednesday morning, but he'd also had a large mosquito bite on that cheek that only really went away overnight... leaving behind some pretty clear signs that something else was going on.

The emergency doctor believes it's an infection from the mosquito bite (he'd been scratching and rubbing at it a lot), so we're going to treat that and hope things return to normal soon.

3 comments:

Greg said...

159 pints of strawberries! You're breaking all your records this year, aren't you? That's very impressive.
And I'm glad that Max was ok; an infection would probably have been my first guess since he'd had the bite already, I'd never have considered an allergic reaction. So well done there :)

The bite
The col, the mountain pass, was known locally as the Bite. Not because of wolves or bears (the locals were oddly friendly with them), nor because of rabid bandits (they'd all died off, from rabies, a while back). Instead it was called the Bite because of the sudden speed which killing, ice-laden storms would spin up and strike it.
None of which was any comfort to Isabella Bonfontaine as the air went so white with snow that she couldn't see her hand in front of her face.

Aholiab said...

The Bite

I quietly entered the house and made my way to the dimly-lit kitchen where my wife was stirring a pot of beans. As I nuzzled her neck she asked anxiously, “Did they take the bite?”

I pulled the bottle of champagne from behind my back and set it on the stovetop, saying “Did they ever!” I murmured into her hair, “By this time next month we’ll be millionaires!”

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, that was a whole lot of berries. So glad they're done for another year...

Your mountain pass intrigues me. As do the locals who are on such good terms with the wolves and bears!

Aholiab - hah, neat take on the prompt. Did not see your final line coming :)