Facedown, all Danny could hear past the ear ringing was his breath pushing through his swollen lips, and then reversing into a faint wheeze.  His heart was still beating.  The throbbing ache in his head and the constant dribble of warm blood over his eye told him so.  He couldn’t feel anything else—not the dew laden air of early morning, not the broken bramble and thorny brush that he had rolled under, not the jagged ground that would soon be his grave.  Curiously, his broken body should be screaming with pain, but it remained silent and unmoving.


Danny had thrown everything away.  It was never his intention, ever.  From devastating his family, abandoning his wife and the only son he had left, Danny turned to drug and alcohol induced carousing that led to lying with any woman who could revive his ego—he was certainly screwed now.


God knows who that immature harlot was he had ended up with, in a roach infested motel, in the middle of nowhere.  All he knew was that she was the sister to a gang of witless punks that dragged him out of bed and used him for batting practice.  Danny must have passed out.  The next dose of rationality found him thrown down this rocky embankment.  Nothing moved.  Not his body, the air, or the blurry shoots of green sticking up from the ground between lumpy clay colored matter.

 
A cold, unnerving feeling came over him.  This was it, the end of the line for Danny Moore.  His mind started to lose itself within the darkness.  His family (what was left of it), his racing career, his very life, was a legacy that at best, “blemished humanity.”  The ear ringing and his breathing quieted.  His dead son would come to greet him, wouldn’t he?  Not likely. Danny’s reckless driving had caused his death, left him with his youngest in a coma and a grieving wife who barely spoke to him.  He deserved this end.


Funny, he didn’t experience life flashing before him.  His last thoughts rested on the wrongs that had recently plagued his life.  The same thoughts that drove him to find ways to forget…forget…Danny could hear the morning dove…was it a dove?  It was time to sleep.  Just let it go…leave everything behind me…undone…shattered…No!


The crumbled form gasped and started to breathe again.  The guardian curiously watched this lost soul struggle to remain among the living. When he blinked away the blood and tears to clear his vision, it was then she decided to help him.  She revealed herself, and offered him a chance to put things right again.  Danny did not hesitate to answer.



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