Flash Fiction: Sensory Prompt (touch) - a broken branch

My sister liked the calluses on her fingers and the contours and tears of the bark. It was like a fingerprint to her, or maybe braille - because it seemed to speak to her with a vibrancy that I did not understand. I just saw the slime and heard the squelch and felt the splinters before they happened. I did not want to touch – it would be horrid, I knew. I wouldn’t get over it – I’d be thinking for days, weeks, later about how that slug rolled over my fingers. Or I’d have to ask our stepmother to take a splinter from my finger, and embarrass myself by crying in front of her.

But Sara felt something else. What was cold and horrid to me was warm to her. The embrace of the river on our ankles pained me to screams, but seemed to give her life. Her hands were confident and loving – her fingers found the handholds I daren’t.

She climbed up, far into the heights of the tree. She called down that she could see the mountains, and the goats that roamed them.

I stayed on the ground, on the patio.

I saw no goats.