It was cold outside. The December night air seeped between the cracks in the log home. Sandra Jean Leone, a house slave, snuggled up under a thick quilt. She shivered until her body heat, radiating inside the quilt, warmed her little cocoon. She could hear the mumbled voices of the white Leone's thru the thick logs of the big house, laughing and celebrating. Despite their shortcomings, they were a close family. They loved one another. Only the smidgen of Negro blood in her veins kept her separate from the revelers on the other side of the wall.
Sandra reflected on her day. Like the other female house slaves, she'd contributed mightily to the late dinner now being consumed by the white Leone's. She'd reaped and prepared the garden vegetables. She'd personally killed and plucked several chickens. She'd help prepare the dinner table. And at the end of her long day, she wasn't invited to dine. She hadn't expected to be.
Now she lay in her bed thinking of ways to cast off the spiritual detritus of her servitude. The young woman sighed. This was her life.
When Sandra's cocoon warmed sufficiently, she rolled from her fetal position and stretched out full length onto her back. It was time to perform.
She allowed her imagination to drift aloft into a dream world of her own making, a world wholly apart from the dreary reality of slavery on a farm. This was Sandra's nightly ritual.
In her mind's eye she saw herself naked at the wooded spring, performing her water dance in the crystalline depths, worshiping at the feet of Creation. She was weightless, angelic in aquatic ballet, golden, beautiful, more a whisper of nature than an appendage of same. Her curly hair drifted wistfully from her scalp and her pubic triangle. Her breasts pouted daintily. A beatific light proceeded from her body. And all God's creation applauded her performance with song.
She essayed a triple back flip, gracefully drawing her right foot up to her left knee and sweeping end over end, using her hands as rudders. She dribbled air bubbles from her nostrils to maintain neutral buoyancy; otherwise the air pockets in her capacious lungs would force her to drift aloft.
Sandra rolled into an Iron Cross, in which she formed her body into a crucifix, arms extended perpendicular to her torso, toes arrowed straight down. She held herself rigid in this position, body angled at sixty degrees from the vertical, until the weight of her muscular frame superceded her lift and she began to founder.
From here she jackknifed into a triple forward header, rolled upright, then quivered her ankles together in a powerful soubresaut that rocketed her skyward. A full moon illuminated the glade. Sandra could see it glimmering directly above the surface of the spring as she ascended. When she breached the surface she pirouetted, drew a full breath and slid back into her worship in the depths.
Something caught her eye. Something above was out of place.
Sandra abandoned her dance. She trickled to the surface, breaching without causing a splash whisper, eyes fully open, focused on a shoreline shadow.
There!