They're all Marvel's.   I make no money.  Don't sue.

    It's four AM, there's a storm outside, and I'm wanting to go run in it.   In fact, I'm about to as soon as I toss this story on the 'net.  Anyways, that oughtta tell you where the inspiration
for this came from.

    Comments to Kaylee1109@aol.com.

    Enjoy!

"Small Cages"
By Kaylee (Kaylee1109@aol.com)

    Hair whipped around her face, lashing hard enough to sting - yet that sting brought laughter.  It rose unbidden from her chest...rose with that strange and joyous release, that trembling of muscles.  Rain slammed against her with a thousand tiny fists, and she threw her head back wildly to welcome it.

    Free.  She was _free._

    Like a mad thing, she raced across the open plains.  These storms didn't come often.  Every appearance was something to cherish, to clutch to, to abandon oneself in.  Exhilaration
flooded through her limbs, through her blood, through her very _bones_...touching on the core of her and tying her forever to this rumbling, untamed savagery, this thing that would _never_ bow its head to the crawling, enroaching civilization. 

    Nature.  The word sounded tame.  Sounded innocent.  Sounded like bunnies and bambies and singing birds and flittering butterflies.  Sounded like a soft spring shower, a warm summer's day, a temperate night broken by the singing of two hundred lusty crickets.

    _Nature._  The thing that it _was_ encompassed that...yet was so much more than most minds could grasp.  Ageless and infinite.  Thunder crash-booming over the violent fingers of
fire that tore air on their journey to touch the earth.  Rain that was a live thing, a breathing thing, an _angry_ thing that gave life and death in the same motion.  Wind howling through
gnarled branches, singing of age-old mysteries lost, so _lost_ to this world.  The power there...so strong...

    Strong enough to carry her.

    She was born up through the raging tempest - snatched by the hand of a watching god who reached out and gave her a gift.  The gift sank into her, took her, became her.  She bared her teeth in euphoric comprehension.  One part of her - forever earth-bound, caught in restraint and control and caution.  The other part - the _real_ part - always living in the center of fury...in the very breast of the storm.

    Her voice was thunder, and she used it to scream to a watching deity.  She screamed her gratitude.  She screamed her devotion.  She screamed her dedication.

    She was _free!_

    Panting short little bursts of excitement...solid earth welcoming the feet that deigned to trod on it...rain easing to a misting cloud that thickened the air and let the exuberance
remain a tangible thing. 

    *Stay,* the earth said to her.   

    *Come,* the skies called to her.

    "Love me," a voice demanded of her.  "Choose me."

    She faced him.

    "Choose me," he told her again, no compromise in the dark eyes.

    She stared at him.  He sought to contain _this_ inside these tiny words?  _This_ that had buried cities on a whim?  _This_ that had swallowed Pompeii with a shrug?  _This_ that had
saved and killed on this earth long before Man was even a smudge on the horizon of the future?

    He was gone...and she missed him...

    Then the lightning caressed her, and she laughed.

    Freedom.

    She ran, and a man ran to her right side.  Compact.  Muscled.  Untamed.  As much a part of this wildness as she.

    Freedom.

    A woman to her left side - a flash of dancing, slanted eyes.  Dark hair, shorn close...the grace of a tigress and the spirit of a tempest.

    Freedom.

    They didn't seek to contain.  They didn't seek to restrain.  Sharing of this...for one, the primal essence of Nature - for the other, the strength and abandon to be found in a woman's soul. 
They called this from her, and she gave it with every ounce of passion inside.

    And outside.  Wind caught them.  Lifted them.  Flung them screaming against the face of the gods, and she saw from the corners of her eyes that her companions grinned as fiercely as
she; that she wasn't _alone_ in this soul-deep madness, in this aching, shrilling _need_ within her...

    She woke.

    A soft roll of thunder overhead...  That trembling was still trying to surge through her blood.  Her heart wanted to pound with all its strength, coursing energy through thirsty veins.

    Another growl in the sky.  Flash-bright whiteness painting a dark canvass with a flare...then dimming.

    Control.

    She wanted to launch from this too-confining room in this too-confining house on this too-confining land.

    Restrain.

    *Come,* the skies called.  *Live.*

    Contain.

    *Return,* a distant, vast land murmured.  *Come _home._*

    "I cannot," she whispered hoarsely.  "There is need here..."

    *_Come._*

    Her spirit screamed a little death as she told them, "Leave me."

    They pretended to listen, as they always did.  They pretended to recede, to leave her in "peace" with her chosen path.

    Of course they lied.

    No.  _She_ lied.  The lie made this suffocating, smothering, thrice-damned _control_ bearable...though only just.  By morning she'd be calm.  The tempest would be safely locked
back in its tiny compartment away from the light and air and _freedom_ it so craved. 

    But there was only one problem.  The tempest shared something of hers.  The tempest was claustrophobic.

    It didn't _like_ small places.

    She stretched herself back across the bed, calming her breathing with firm discipline as her thoughts calmed the twitching, antsy sky overhead.  Control.  Restrain.  Contain.  She knew all too well - knew better than _anyone_ what might happen should she forget this endless mantra.  So she repeated it over and over, in essence if not in words, and she slowly buried that yearning cry deep inside once again.

    At least in her dreams she could find some release...could let her imagination roam with the wings of her spirit.  Cobalt eyes closed on a long sigh, tension easing as the _need_ was
pushed down.  Her mind sought that only partly fulfilling fantasy and drew her back into sleep with gentle pulls.  Back to a desert called Kalahari.  Back to the images of two people who knew the depths of her soul.  Back to illusory freedom.

    In the sky above, rebellious clouds gathered.  A giant chuckled, thrumming the air with its rumbling baritone.  Wind tickled the trees and prepared that ancient music.

    The tempest didn't _like_ small places.

--end--