“Thwack— thack—thack.” The sound of rhythmic dull thuds was lulling Merry into a trance. Listening to the boys doing their chores was certainly a lot better than performing them herself. Merry Dae Shields was skipping her chores today and hiding out in the hay loft of the born that she was supposed to be cleaning.
“Mer's supposed to be helping us do this,” Trance said, pausing in his shoveling maure in order to complain his older brother, Omen.
Omen was 17 and large. He was tall (even taller than their father) and broad. His skin had the permanent tan that all the boys had from helping Daddy in the fields, and his hair was cut close to his head. Mama lined all the boys up Saturday morning and cut their hair so they would be ready for church on Sunday.
Merry wished she would do the same for the girls, but all her hair was thick and unruly spilling down her back, just like all of her sisters. Her hair made her hot, and it was so heavy it gave her headache's, but that didn't seem to matter in the Lord's eyes. It always snagged on branches and pulled her scalp whenever she ran through the forest, chasing her younger siblings.
She had a lot of siblings. Omen was the oldest at 17, but then there was her perfect sister, Grace Lee who would turn 16 soon. Merry was next at 14, then Trance, who was 13. Mama had her first set of twins then, Sasha and Soarin . It was all down hill from there. Every year there was another baby, including one more set of twins, and even a set of triplets. Daddy had kids from before Mama but Merry had never met them.
Merry hadn't met a lot of people. The Shield kids had school in the den, and she had known the kids from church so long she was pretty sure she had never met them, had just always known them.
That was all going to change today. Merry was hiding in the hay loft and peering out the big window and trying to see the unpaved road that wound up to their house. Today, a camera crew was coming to LIVE with them. The Shields were going to be on TV... okay, they didn't actually own a TV but still! This was a big deal.
So that's why she wasn't helping her brothers clean out the born. She refused to appear on national television covered in poop. It just wasn't fair that Grace and Sasha got to stay inside and bake cookie's and then go with Mama to great the camera crew. It wasn't Merry's fault that she could run as fast as any boy and that she would rather climb a tree , rather than sit under one and read, the was Sasha did this morning. It also wasn't Merry's fault that she climbed tree's in skirts. She didn't own pants! Her parents made her wear skirts!
So Grace, stupid, perfect, graceful Grace, and quiet, boring Sasha go to sit inside and meet the camera's with Mama. Loud and boisterous Merry had to stay in the barn and shovel poop with the boys
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