Ela and Cinder

The life of the three

Once upon a time, there was a small family of a father "Tom", wife "Gillian" and baby girl "Ela". They lived in a tall blue country home in a small village on the outskirt of town. A church was right down the lane where the father would take his daughter every Sunday. The mother was not of fathers faith and would only visit a church during a funeral or if their neighbors were having a wedding. Tom always smiled his house when he came home each night from work but always wondered if there was still an evil lurking in the fireplace waiting to get out.

Ela Please sit down

The church was quiet as even the church's practitioner at the podium stopped talking except for Ela. Ela screamed when her father made her sit down for the fifth time in as many minutes.

With a rosy face, Tom was trying to smile and whisper through gritted teeth. "Ela be good now."

Toms biggest pride and joy was his two-year-old Ela. She is a beautiful girl with dimples and spirit of a firecracker.

Tom smiled half laugh and mouthed sorry to everyone. Ela was in the process to start another wail of distress when she noticed the funny wig on the woman in front of her. She lunged forward almost falling off the bench and pulled the wig off her head. A gasp from the woman at the same time Ela said "Lood dadds Bugs!" in the unfortunately quiet church.

From that day on Tom decided not to take Ela to church.

At Home

Ela was five and loved to help her mother with washing clothes and sweeping up. One of Ela's favorite chores was to help Gillian keep the fireplace lit. Gillian would swoosh her away when she played in the cinder to much.

"Ela you stay out of that Fireplace there is no need for you to be in that thing."

"Momma the fire was going out."

"You little which get out of that fire you will burn yourself. The fire is hot enough, now go get my wash outside then go look for some friends."

Gillian always told Ela to go look for friend s right before Gillian went into the woods to look for herbs and other smelly things. So Ela even being five knew what mom was planning.

Ela would lie "OK mom I will stay outside and look for friends." As soon as Gillian left the house Ela ran inside to play with the fire again. The fire was like magic to Ela, popping, and hissing was, to Ela, like it was trying to talk to her. She would talk to it too but it never answered back. Ela would gaze for hours into the fire wishing she had a friend to talk to.