{"id":1360,"date":"2014-09-10T05:42:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T05:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1360"},"modified":"2014-09-10T05:45:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T05:45:00","slug":"ten-the-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1360","title":{"rendered":"ten (the divide)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Maggie<\/a>
Maggie Taylor. The divide. 2011. See more images from, and information about, this artist on her website …<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was my sister who came, down from the mountain, when the rest of them refused. I hadn’t seen her in ten or eleven years, but she was largely unchanged.<\/p>\n

‘Come home,’ she said, kissing my cheek.<\/p>\n

‘I can’t,’ I said, kissing hers in return.<\/p>\n

My groom was sleeping by the fire. His long hind legs spread out on the warm stones. When we sat, I tucked my feet under him, out of habit.<\/p>\n

I showed her the litter, picked out\u00a0the runt, putting the mewling thing in her arms. She was stiff and proper as a judge, but I saw something soften in her as she held him.<\/p>\n

‘Have you named him yet,’ she asked.<\/p>\n

I shook my head, my hand tunnelling into the mass of his brothers and sisters, into their tongued and furred squirm. I lifted two of them in one hand and knelt to tuck them against their father’s side. He nuzzled them in and then licked at my fingers. Did I still taste of this morning’s love-making? I blushed and pressed my hand into my pocket, hoping my sister had not noticed. She had, of course.<\/p>\n

She lifted the runt to her face and studied him. ‘I shall call him Paul,’ she said. ‘That’s a sensible name for a sensible boy.’<\/p>\n

Neither the wolf, nor the mountain, agreed*.<\/p>\n

*The final line of this micro-story is a phrase borrowed from Aldo Leopold’s ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’: you can read the full essay online<\/a>)<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was my sister who came, down from the mountain, when the rest of them refused. I hadn’t seen her in ten or eleven years, but she was largely unchanged. ‘Come home,’ she said, kissing my cheek. ‘I can’t,’ I said, kissing hers in return. My groom was sleeping by the fire. His long hind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[725,167,288],"tags":[722,727,747,744,728,745,748,746],"class_list":["post-1360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-200-words-200-days","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-200-days","tag-200-words","tag-aldo-leopold","tag-maggie-taylor","tag-microfiction","tag-the-divide","tag-thinking-like-a-mountain","tag-wolf"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-lW","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/maggietaylor.jpg?fit=800%2C800","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1363,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions\/1363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}