The Strangers We Meet

By Ann Stratton

Five stories about meeting strangers and the lessons they migh have to teach: a boy on the cusp of manhood, a rat who leads his human to sanctuary, an apartment full of strangers, a man lost in the citrus trees, and a mysterious note leads a man all over town in futile pursuit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ann Stratton
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393235163

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. 

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The Strangers We Meet

Ann Stratton

A Blind Woman Production publication

Copyright © 2019 Ann Stratton

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to the ebook store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction, a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Credits

Editing, formatting, and cover design by Ann Stratton

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Waiting for God

Simon Says

Shrodinger

Finding Gomez

A Note from Santiago

About the Author

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Waiting for God

Cahdi stands where no one can see him, in the deep grasslands, where the saw edged grass stands taller than he. He holds the tools and weapons he will wield when he returns to his family a man. He will stand here until the god comes and gives him his name. It is a rite every male must go through upon puberty, to take his place among the men of the grasslands.

Cahdi waits with anticipation, excitement, and dread. He wonders what the god will look like. Everyone describes something different. Pola, who stood here just last month, described a chariot of glory and light that blinded him until the god put His hands on his shoulders.

Domen said the god was a mouse, one of the little striped jumpers that collected seeds in the tall grass roots. Everyone laughed at him until Grandfather Yarro hit them all over the head with his stick and told them they had dishonored the god with their disrespect.

The god is in all things, he said. We all see the god as He wills it, not as we wish. The little jumping mouse is the same as the burning chariot and just as true. To ridicule Domen is to dishonor the god.

And now it is Cahdi’s turn to stand in the grasslands, waiting for the god to arrive. He wonders how the god will show Himself. Will He appear in glory, as Pola described, or will He creep in, as small and humble as Domen said? To see the god as an ordinary thing implied that the seeker would never amount to anything great. That’s not entirely true of course; some of the tribe’s greatest men saw the god in ordinary things. Still, true or false, the perception remains. Cahdi surveys the sky, wondering if the hawk soaring overhead is the god, watching him.

The day is long and the sun is hot. Cahdi tries to conserve his water, but he drinks the last of it not long after noon. He wonders if he dare go to refill his canteen. What if the god comes while he is gone? There would be no one here to receive the name. A boy in another band had been ill when the time came and he never