Thoughts of the Past

I stole a moment before crashing into sleep to do a little writing.

I sit beside the white-painted plaster hut, a slave hut, and think about the men who once slept here, lived here. They must have been short, is my first thought. I'm barely five and a half feet and I'd have to scrunch a bit to lie down in one. There are a couple groups of slave huts down here on this end of the island where the land barely manages to stay dry at high tide. The slaves worked the salt pans where evaporation takes sea water and makes it a commodity. Sailing ships called here for salt to preserve meats and fish for their long journey home, so enterprising settlers tired of trying to eke a living out of the thin, acid soil of this coral outcrop turned their efforts toward salt. Great mountains of it still glitter in the pounding sunlight waiting for cargo ships to take it to melt road ice in the northern winter with a bit of the tropics. The slave huts stand abandoned but not neglected. Maintained as a tourist spot and perhaps a chilling reminder of man's intolerance, they cower on the shore still reeking of years of despondence and despair.

Curse you, Bob. *shaking a fist (but in a friendly way)* Now I stop and think what I can write about the picture I'm looking at and how it can connect to the cliff murder, Emelia, the kayaking woman, and the guy at the lighthouse. It is a novel, dammit. I was happy thinking I was just writing disconnected thoughts each night.

--Barbara