Forsephas' Fateful Journey.

"You eat it, For," my mother said. "It's delicious."

"I don't want to," I said, taking another bite of my bread. "Look at this," I said, holding up the slice. "It looks like a cat threw up on it."

My mother frowned. "That's because you didn't let me cook it long enough yesterday." She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Enough, For. Eat your lunch." She went back to her own meal before I could say anything else.

I stared at the bread for a moment, then shrugged and took another bite. It was really hard to argue with my mother when she was being all calm and reasonable about something. I should have known better than to bring up how ugly the bread was in front of her. She always got really upset about that kind of thing, like anyone had ever said it was pretty before or after they ate it. Even though we had lived here our whole lives, my mother was crazy that way - she was convinced people thought our town was ugly, as if there were any other towns around here to compare ours to!

"So, what are you doing today?" my father asked as he chewed his bread.

"I'm going to go over to Micah's house," I replied quietly, hoping he wouldn't notice how little I actually ate.

"Well don't stay too long," he said distractedly as he looked out the window into the street where his shop used to be. He shook his head and turned back toward us at the table. "Who would have thought we'd be doing this again so soon?" He started picking at his bread some more, but seemed less interested in eating it now than he had been just a few moments before. "We should have been ready for this," he muttered under his breath, not looking at either of us anymore.

"What do you mean?" I asked him quietly even though I knew exactly what he meant and that there was nothing either of us could do about it now. My parents were still trying to figure out how it happened that our town had been destroyed twice in the last two years by floods from an old dam upriver that no one had bothered to maintain since over half of our town ended up underwater both times! Of course there had been flood warnings both times too - warning signs posted all around town - but my parents' shop was right next to the river and hadn't flooded until they had built their new store further inland after the first flood last year! And now all that hard work rebuilding their business only seemed to have been for nothing... again! If only someone could have explained why the dam broke so that my parents might finally understand why misfortune kept following them wherever they went but they never did! And now they were stuck living in their relatives' basement until they figured out what they were going to do next - again! But there certainly wasn't anything either of us could do about any of this now so there wasn't much point in thinking about it too much or for too long either... No matter how frustrating that might be! Ugh! Why does everything always have to happen so slowly?! How many times do we need things explained to us before we ever get it?! Who does everyone think is supposed to explain things like this?! Anyway...