Under the Mango Tree: 101 Tales (4)

DADDY DON'T GO

Challenge No.62 - The Premonition.

Write a scene or story that includes a destiny predicted for the future.

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Though it made her relationships that more complicated, it was Emery's iron control of her emotions that made her the formidable negotiator that companies and countries paid a high price for, so if she lost her cool, it sent seismic shock waves through all who knew her. Emery's reputation as one who was never overly emotional started from her toddler years. No one could understand it. But as with all things they got used to it.

Over time a pattern emerged. The first time it happened, Emery was five years old. She came flying through the house.

"Where's daddy! Where's my daddy." She was on the brink of hysteria.

Her mother froze in shock at the raw display of emotion from a child, many thought had none.

"He's getting ready to go to work. He's out front."

Before her mother could finish, Emery was gone. "DAAADDDYY!"

"DADDY DON'T GO!"

The sound of his calm, cool and collected five-year-old wailing at him, got the desired effect. He stopped. "Emery?"

"DADDY DON'T GO!"

"I have to sweetie. I must go to work."

But she acted so out of character that he stayed long enough to settle her, then left.

What the little girl had not said was that as she played with her dolls in the mirror a vision unfolded of a bridge collapsing and her father's car plunging into the bay.

Later that day her dad called home and spoke to his wife.

"Did you hear?"

"What?"

"The bridge to work collapsed. If I didn't stop to calm Emery, I would have been on it and probably dead."

Things returned to normal in the household until Emery was ten years old. As before she was desperate. "DADDY DON'T GO!"

The déjà vu was strong. Her father paused. "Why?"

She refused to reveal the source of her terror. But instead, insisted. "DADDY DON'T GO! PLEASE!"

This time the mirror had shown her a hold-up at the coffee shop he would go to every morning.

When the same drama repeated at the age of fifteen her parents had had enough.

"Talk." Her father ordered.

The familiar Emery sat before them.

"What's going on?" Her mother added.

Emery contemplated her parents and as if she were making a school presentation, she explained how the vision would reveal itself through the mirror. Only of her father. Only at five-year intervals.

"Each time I have managed to save you and as long as it is within my power to do so... I will." She ended.

Her parents just looked at each other. But there was no denying the predictive nature of what was happening.

Her father spoke. "Tell you what. When you are twenty. Don't come screaming at me. Control yourself and let me know what's happening."

The teen turned her cold gaze to her father. "Okay."

When Emery was forty. She received her last vision. She hopped onto a plane and rushed to her father's death bed.

"Daddy don't go." She whispered.

© 1 May 2022

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