Interpersonal Relationships" a collection

By Ann Stratton

Five Stories examining how some people get along -- or don't -- with their fellow humans:

 

Rains in Their Season: Arjuna and Deliya are the last of their family, surviving in a decaying old mansion. Arjuna dreams of past days' glory, but Deliya just gets on with the day. But she still has dreams too, and one day the dream comes home to roost.

 

Arusa and Jim! At the Warehouse: Arusa is a talking semi truck with an attitude problem. Jim's just trying to deliver the goods. But there's no one at the warehouse to take the delivery.

 

A Bowl of Light: The church has just received a shipment of glass bowls. Nobody will confess to ordering them, but there they are. Josephina thinks they look best on the tables, but they won't stay there.

 

Home is Home: a story of adventure with five sisters who roam the world, doing and seeing and being. The world is a glorious place and they are going to witness every bit of it. Even Marina, whether she likes it or not.

 

On the Beach: Wayne's private paradise has been invaded by tourists. He's only one man and there are four of them. How is he going to get rid of them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Stratton
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223052005

Ann Stratton

Ann Stratton started writing at age thirteen with the usual results. After a long stint in fan fiction, honing her skills, she hopes she has gotten better since then. She lives in Southeastern Arizona, trying to juggle all her varied interests. 

Book preview

Interpersonal Relationships

A collection

Ann Stratton

A Blind Woman Production publication

Copyright © 2023 Ann Stratton

To give the reader more of a sample, all legal matter has been moved to the end of this book.

Rains in Their Season

Our village was a small city once. Despite being off the main road, it was a prosperous place, where people came from all around to buy our produce and crops, or artwork. Our river was sweet and strong and had laid down a layer of very fine clay that our artisans turned into beautiful pottery that many admired and coveted. The very same river watered our lush little valley where the soil was fertile, where we could grow all manner of crops. Our people were well fed, and happy, and well occupied.

We were content. Maybe we were too content, and complacent in our content.

The weather turned on us. Formerly mild and healthy, we got too much rain at once, and not enough the rest of the year. Our crops drowned in the rain and died of thirst when it didn’t rain. Our sweet river began flooding every year, bursting its banks and washing out the clay works, and more crop land every year. Then it would subside to a mere trickle that barely gave enough water to drink.

Our artisans couldn’t make their beautiful pottery without the clay works. They left for better places, where they could ply their trade. Our farmers went away one by one to more fertile lands. Our herders took their sad and diminished herds away before they could all die of starvation. Enterprising heroes marched away upstream, searching for the reasons why the river no longer flowed. They never came back. Our religious leaders claimed our sins had driven the river away, and if we just repented, we would have our paradise again. There was a great deal of soul searching then, and people driven out for their lack of faith, including the religious leaders who failed to intercede on our behalf.

Our small city became a town. Then it became a small town. Then it became the small and desperate village you see now, with a few farmers scratching their crops out of the destroyed soils and a few herders keeping some small livestock that might survive on these ravaged hills. None of us are happy, or well fed, or content, save for those very few who prefer this simple life, or believe it is what we deserve.

But not my sister. Born just as the rich years were being destroyed, growing up while our town disintegrated, maturing as our village grew poorer and poorer and more desperate, she accepted it all. She found her contentment in the endless rounds of days, working in the poor fields, tending a few animals of her own.

We lived together in the house our grandparents built, when our city was rich. We only lived in a few rooms, because there were only the two of us and we couldn’t keep up the whole house by ourselves. The rest we used for storage or kept our animals in and everything else fell to ruin, scavenged to repair what we could.

Neither of us ever married, because any and all able bodied people left for better circumstances. We only stayed because we were caring for our parents and by the time they died it was too late for us to go elsewhere. Dying village or not, this is our home and we have no other ties to any other place. The only people left are too old or too closely related to us to marry, and the chances of someone coming here just to live in this dying village are much too small to even think about.

So, my sister and I lived in our family’s rotting house, tending what few crops we could get to grow, caring for our few animals. She might be content with the endless round of days, but I was not, but where would I go? What would I do? So I tended my crops, I tended my animals, and simmered in resentment.

I even resented my sister. I am ashamed to say that I took it out on her too. Bless her, she only bore my temper tantrums with silence and left me alone to get over it as best I could. I spent a lot of time down by our diminished river, stewing in my own anger and throwing pebbles into the fouled water.

I thought a lot about leaving her, our village, this whole sad valley, and just striking out on my own with only my barest belongings on my back. Turn my face to wind or the sun and follow them where they might lead me. Follow the riverbed upstream where all the other heroes went, find out what happened to our river. Go on to the nearest town or city and see what was there I could do. Track down some relative and join them in their new life. The possibilities were endless.

Too many possibilities. They paralyzed me. I sat on the river bank throwing rocks into the water and stewed.

Deliya sat down beside me. She hung her feet over the bank and watched the dry earth tumble down to the streambed. I tossed another pebble before I looked at her. She was looking at me and we held each other’s eyes for a moment before we broke it off in embarrassment. I looked off toward the far hills, where the clouds were building, promising wind and maybe a spit of rain.

The roof over the animal shed which used to be a bedroom, back in the wealthy days needs repairing again, she said conversationally. I’m thinking we can take what we need from the old ballroom. There’s still plenty of structure there.

I shrugged, suddenly frustrated by the futility of it all. Why bother? It’s just going to rot through again and we’ll have to use another part of the house to fix it, or the kitchen or dining room or parlor, where we sleep. Pretty soon there won’t be enough to keep the rain off. We can barely keep the roof on anyway, and by the looks of those clouds, we’re going to lose it again. And then we will be sleeping in the rain. We might as well just leave. Go to the city. Where did Cousin Cam end up anyway?

Slow Effort City, I think. Deliya didn’t say anything for a little while. She tossed a pebble into the river and finally went on. That would be easy for us. Convenient, even. But that wouldn’t be fair to the animals, to make them suffer for our convenience. It’s not fair to make them sleep in the rain. I’m not going to just turn them loose to run wild either. Some predator will kill them. And there’s nobody in town who can take them. They have enough of their own to take care of. I won’t abandon them.

She sounded as angry and frustrated as I felt. I looked at her again. Was there a white hair in the black? Were there lines starting to form around her dark eyes? Suddenly I realized we were not young anymore. I counted back over the years and frightened myself. When had we gotten this old?

Fright went to guilt. As the remaining head of the family and the last son, it was my responsibility to care for my sister, to keep up the house, maintain the estate, uphold the family name.  I’d done none of that. If anything, she’d been the one to take care of me, repair the house, keep up the land as best it could considering the circumstances, hold up the family name.

Frustration overrode the guilt. My sister was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We tore down one part of the house to repair another in an endless cycle. Drought and flood took away the land, even as we tried to shore up and improve the soils. There was no one left in town to question our family name.

There was nothing left. There were no real reasons to stay. Let the animals run wild. Let the doddering townspeople take what they wanted from our house; we’d done the same from abandoned houses ourselves. No one in town cared about our family name. Most of them were too senile to remember their own names anyway.

Deliya, why don’t we go away? Why don’t we go to Slow Effort City, or any other city, where we can make a real living? Scratching an existence out of this valley isn’t worth the effort, and we don’t need to live this way. We don’t deserve to live this way! If we leave, we can go anywhere, do anything!

Deliya thought about it for a moment. ...that’s true. We could go anywhere. We could do anything. She turned and looked me right in the eye. But we’d still starve. We’d still be scratching out an existence, for someone else. We don’t have the skills to attract the kind of money you expect. We would be just common laborers for someone else, doing just what we’ve always done. The only difference between our village and any city is the size, and here, we work for ourselves. You know this, Arjuna.

Sad thing was, I did know. Our family had never been makers. We had traded our town’s products up to tradesmen who took them elsewhere. We did not make them. The last letter Cousin Cam sent us had mentioned how wonderful it was to live in the city, the sights, the food, the people, and as a post script he mentioned that he was carving little trinkets to sell to tourists and still looking for a place to live. We read between the lines then.

Frustration went to depression. The wind from the storm arrived, pulling at our hair and clothes. It smelled wet. That meant we would get either spit which was useless or a torrent, which was worse than useless, because it ran off any slope, carrying the soil with it. Deliya looked up at the clouds rolling our way.

If only there was a way to tame the storm, she murmured. Then she got to her feet, dusting off her backside. The animals will be frightened. I need to get them into shelter. She walked away, just as lighting flashed, followed too closely by the crack of thunder.

If I sat here any longer, I would be washed away one way or another. I got up and followed her, helping her corral the animals we depended on in their bedroom shelter. After that we huddled over the table in the kitchen, drinking precious tea, thinned out to save the leaves. How I craved a good strong cup of tea that stiffened the spine and brightened the eye!

Outside, the wind tore at the roof. It whistled down the chimney, sending ashes around the room. The fire flared and guttered and I scooped coals into the firebox, where they would be safe and warm if the fire did go out. I heard tiles fall from the ruined parts of the house, and once a bang that suggested that more than just tiles had fallen.

The storm continued into the night. To save candles, we went to bed as soon as it was dark. I couldn’t sleep for the noise, but I must have because when I woke up it was light again and the storm had moved on. Birds sang outside as if nothing had ever happened. Our animals made a fuss in their former office shelter, wanting their morning food.

Deliya walked in from the outside, barefoot, in her night shift, her hair mussed. Her hands were empty, so she had not gone to collect firewood.

Where have you been? I exclaimed in reflex.

She only went to the fireplace and laid out the saved coals. She set stored wood around them and blew them to a flame. When it was burning well, she set the porridge pot over it to heat. Then she went and dressed, reordering her hair. Outside, she said at last. Why don’t you go and feed the animals?

Confused, I did as I was told. Our small herd swarmed around me, happy to see me, happier to see the feed pail in my hands.  I refilled their water trough and let them out into their pen in the new morning sunshine. I petted them a little bit, too. Their affection, even though it was more for the feed pail