I’ve recently started playing Raft again. The original crew I got into the game with no longer plays it, and it’s not exactly fun to play alone once you’ve progressed through most of the plot (or even as you’re progressing through the plot, given that fighting a bear alone sucks). Recently, though, I managed to convince some friends to give the game a shot and while the tedium of early survival sure hit hard, it was fun to hang out with my friends and play a cooperative game.
Continue readingDrift
Anchor
What weighs me down weighs naught at all.
Instead, it pulls me from my feet.
The ways I’m down aren’t ways at all
But an urge to admit defeat.
I wallow not in some dark pit
But in an endless sea replete
With crushing waves that don’t remit
And don’t allow me to retreat.
I tread and float upon the sea
With nothing but my strength and will.
There is nothing to tether me
Or that will make my floating still.
I am not content to survive
Waves larger than the tallest hill.
I will fight while I’m still alive
To buck this watery treadmill.
I will forge myself an anchor
Made of my wit and will and word.
I will twist a rope of my rancor
And all of the pain I’ve incurred.
My anchor will lodge in the deeps,
Stuck fast no matter how I’m stirred
By the wind, waves, and rain that sweeps
Away the rafts I once preferred.
Snowy Tow
The snow came down, coating trees and drifting into mounds beside the road. Rosie didn’t think every drift had a car in it, like the one she was looking at, but the thought pressed on her as she tried to focus.
It was a simple job. Wait for calls on snowy nights and then drive the truck into the snow to rescue unfortunate drivers. This was probably her last call of the night. Once 3 a.m. rolled around, it was someone else’s turn.
After checking with the driver, she towed the car onto the road. Ten minutes of work and talking and the driver was on their way again. As she sat in her car and filled out the last bit of paperwork, her attention kept drifting to the mounds of snow. She’d lived around here all her life. She knew the fields down route 44 were lousy with heavy bushes and hills, but something kept pulling her eyes to the sea of white.
She set the clipboard aside, bundled up, and waded into the snow. It was up to her shins, but a particular mound kept calling to her. She walked up to it and started digging with her hands.
Twenty minutes later, she was back in her truck, driving. It had been only snow over a large bush. As she rounded a bend, looking for the county route home, she got a call. There was someone else who needed to be pulled out on route 44. Dispatch sent her back out, even though her shift was over, since she was close.
She turned the truck around and started looking for a car in the snow. She spotted it a few minutes later and smiled, despite herself. She’d been right about the drift, just half an hour early.