Seek The Peace (A Gruesome Story)

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This week, the moon has loomed high and white, fully illuminating the jungle, the homes, and the ocean blanketing out beneath her. There’s a calmness in the evenings here that is absent during the frenzied heat of the Nicaraguan day.

It may not have been a peaceful month for me or many others (for numerous, frazzling reasons), but tranquil evenings like this under the moonlight slow life down to a trickle. Moments in the night that give me pause to reflect gratefully for what is going well, even if the day has delivered too many things that are not.

The pets seem to love this time of night, too. Roo frolicking in the open grass, and Tino lurking nearby in the bushes. Tino’s efforts to remain a hidden huntress are futile, as her white fur glows in the moonlight, and she’s unwittingly the brightest thing on the ground.

I listen to the familiar nighttime jungle birds, cawing and screeching unseen nearby until an unfamiliar sound suddenly reaches my ears.

Tino and I look up.

Roo is not in sight (she was not gifted with glow-in-the-dark fur like Tino), but I can hear a strange jingling noise not too far away. It sounds like wind chimes. Like hanging, hollow wind chimes being shaken in the…