3 July 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2787: flea surgeon
Last day of work for the week, and perhaps for some time because things in Big Loft, VA were calming down – Col. H.F. Lee prepared for his day in Big Loft as the police captain acting as unofficial police chief, his mind already on the precincts whose movements he had been coordinating, and what officers would be getting a recommendation for a commendation – so he got the surprise of coming off the porch and his legs being wrapped up by his seven-year-old cousin Amanda Ludlow from next door.
“You look handsome and peaceful and stuff, but I just felt deep on the inside that you needed some snugglecouragement,” she said as she nearly caused both of them to hit the ground because she had thrown her cousin off balance. But he recovered and picked her up and embraced her back.
“Thank you, Amanda,” he said as he kissed her forehead. “I truly appreciate you and the snugglecouragement.”
“Any time, Cousin Harry – I got you!” she said, and ran happily back home and back to bed, mission accomplished.
Col. Lee composed himself while having a thought that had come to him before: Ludlow cousins Andrew, George, Amanda, and Grayson were more closely related to him than cousins Eleanor, Edwina, and Lil' Robert because Anne Ludlow had done the same thing his mother had done: not checked all the records for Lee heritage. Amanda and her actual siblings were double-Lees, just like the colonel, and they were beginning to show some of the same signs. Andrew: his quiet, deep faith and caring leadership of his younger sibling remarkable at his age, and the budding of insomnia manifesting as him sitting up in his room staring out at the starry night and thinking deep thoughts until they became dreams. Grayson: even more quiet, but building profiles of everything and everyone around him because listening all the time while doing his Lego or clay builds. George: missed the quiet part, but the precocious intellect was there, and also the tendency to form very strong singular friendships early.
But Amanda: Amanda had so much of the hidden, near-clairvoyant empath part that had come from Horatio Lee, the young man who had left his whole society behind to come and live in the Blue Ridge because he had hated slavery, had hated his family members complaining about how much they hated not having their slaves, and had sensed, correctly, that as soon as they could, they would institute laws that would punish their former slaves and their children for doing anything but coming as close to back in slavery as possible. Horatio could not and would not endure or participate in any of this, and so had struck out for a new life in 1870, at age 16.
Amanda, at seven, was already taking big baby steps in a different kind of life – she had become a vegetarian because she did not want to hurt animals like she did not want to hurt people, and concerned herself with making sure every living thing around her felt safe and loved. She could feel the feelings of the people around her like no one else except Andrew, who manifested the same empath trait in his constant, knowing concern for his siblings and friends.
Amanda also was a leader, leading by example, so much so that George, after seeing blue pork and realizing that was a thing when pigs were allowed to eat rats and the rats had been poisoned, had also become a vegetarian! And then there was 'snugglecouragement,' Amanda's own term for her constant hug ministry. She had started a “more hugs” trend in her circle of family and neighbors because of her example.
“Amanda is a whole woman of steel wrapped in a sweet-voiced, snuggly little girl,” next door neighbor almost-18-year-old Vanna Trent observed in the colonel's hearing once. “She's just steering the world to a better place around her and she doesn't even know it.”
She didn't. By the time the colonel drove back from work, she was sitting on the porch with similarly tempered best friend eight-year-old Gracie Trent and just being Amanda.
“But if you do need to get flea collars for Goody and Goldie, Gracie, I need to know because I gotta get into the phone book or put on the Goggle to search.”
Col. Lee just got back into his truck, knowing he was going to have to lay down across the seat in about another five seconds...
“I gotta put on the Goggle to find a flea hospital and a flea surgeon because when we fall a long way we can break legs, and fleas have more legs so you know they are going to hurt at least one, Gracie.”
“Yeah, you definitely will need to use Goggle to find something that small,” Gracie said. “I will let you know, but I think it's going to be easier to just pray that fleas don't bother Goldie and Goody, because like Grandma Velma says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
“Yeah, fleas need prayer like mosquitoes because they just have such a hard time staying out of trouble!” Amanda said. “People are always just plotting on them, and they just don't get it!”
That conversation went on, but Col. Lee did not hear it because he was laughing too hard!