Prophecy, Chapter 1

Chapter One

The Beginning

            I grew up on a farm that my parents had built themselves in the early eighteenth century.  Besides my siblings and me, the farm had been my parents' most prized possession.  They had purchased the eighteen acres of barren land, land that people claimed would never sustain life in the early years of their marriage.  Land that only contained dry, lifeless dirt.  Land that no one with any hint of sanity would ever want. 

            Except for my father.

            My father claimed he could see the potential in the barren, unwanted property.  He believed that he would be able to turn the lifeless dirt into rich, fertile soil.  With the promise that he would have the land flourishing within a year's time, he convinced my mother into purchasing the unwanted land.  My mother was skeptical at first, but she loved and trusted my father and agreed to let him try.

            So their lives together truly began.

            The first three months on their newly acquired property were spent repairing and refurbishing the old, rundown house that rested on the incorrigible soil.  Three long months of tearing down molded walls, ripping up rotted floors, and endless cleaning of the several inches of dust that covered every surface- but the work that needed to be done did not discourage my parents from their dream of creating a beautiful home that they could raise a family in.  A home that was their own.  A dream that my father ensured my mother to become true, and true it had become within those first three months.

            After the house had been repaired and furnished to my mother's liking, she had another project for them to begin.  My mother wished for a barn to complete her vision of their new home. 

            “If we are to live on a farm, we will need a barn,” she had told my father the night they had finished the house, eyes sparkling with her complete joy of completing the house.  “All working farms have a barn.”

            What my mother wanted is what my mother received.  My father lived to please his wife.  She was his queen and the love of his life.  Helen Marie Cole was the most precious part of Daniel William Cole's life.  One of the happiest days in my father's life was the day that my mother had agreed to become his wife, forever tying their lives together.  At least that is what my father told anyone who cared to listen to him, and no one could deny that his words weren't true.  Just a mere glimpse of the look that came into my father's eyes when he spoke of my mother, and you could see the undying love that flamed there. 

            So when my mother decided that she wanted their property to have a barn, my father didn't hesitate in promising her that he would construct her a barn.  My father only had one condition- she could not see it until he had finished building it.

            When my mother had argued that she wanted to help with constructing the barn as she had helped with the house, my father appeased her with the promise of letting her be the one to paint the barn however she pleased when it was built.  My father was quite insistent in his desire for the barn to be a gift to my mother, a gift that she would not be able to see until it was fully constructed and ready for my mother's paint brushes.  In the end, my mother gave in to my father's wishes- reluctantly.  It had been one of the only times that my father refused my mother what she wanted and desired.

            Distracting my mother with the bare walls inside their newly constructed home that begged to have the soft bristles of paint brushes to spread colors artistically across their surface, my father was able to begin building my mother's barn.  My father knew that his wife wouldn't be able to refuse the desire to transform the plain, barren walls into beautiful murals of delicate flowers, breath-taking scenes, and woodland creatures- allowing him to work on his gift without her curious, prying eyes.

            My father worked day and night on the barn, barely taking time to sleep and eat a meal each day.  He cut down the trees from the forest that surrounded most of the property for lumber, refusing to ride into two to purchase the wood from the lumber house in closest town.  My father wanted to be the only person's hands to work on the barn.  The only outside help came from nature, who supplied the materials needed to build the barn. 

            Hack, pull, saw, sand, hammer, repeat.  This became the daily routine for my father for an entire month- the deadline my father had given himself.  A feat that everyone believed to be impossible with only one, single man working, but the doubters didn't understand was that that one man was Daniel William Cole- a man more determined and dedicated to what he believes in than any man ever to be born.  My father had the motivation of pleasing  my mother and bringing a smile to her face while filling her soul with happiness.  It was all the motivation my father needed to complete his task with the impossible amount of time of doing so, and to the shock of everyone- including my mother- my father finished building the barn within a month's time.  My mother had never been more proud or more in love with my father that day.

            To show her joy and appreciation, my mother prepared a feast of all my father's favorite foods.  They celebrated the whole night- singing, laughing, and dancing until the first rays of the sunlight became apparent in the distance.  After watching the sunrise, wrapped in each others' warm embrace, my parents retired into their home to rest before their next tasks began.

           

            As agreed upon, my father purchased a variety of paints for my mother to paint the barn in anyway she pleased.  She went quickly to work with the paints, barely taking the time to pressing a chaste kiss to my father's cheek, too excited to begin putting the new paints to work.  While my mother busied herself with painting the barn, my father set out to turn the barren land into a flourishing farm. 

            Each of them became absorbed in their work for the next few months.  From sunrise to sunset, my parents worked and worked- slowly transforming the ugly, lifeless piece of property into a beautiful, thriving land to be proud of.  With the delicate strokes of the paint brush, my mother transformed the barn into the most exquisite establishment that would later house livestock feed and equipment to care and shape the land and all that lived there.  Under my father's careful and dedicated hands, the lifeless dirt became rich, nurturing soil that promised to sustain the life of any seedlings that my parents decided to plant within the earth's surface, seedlings that would thrive and bear a plentiful harvest.

            My father plowed seven of the thirty acres they owned, turning the hard, dry dirt until it softened into fine, manageable clumps.  After the dirt had loosened, my father spread a special compost that transformed the lifeless dirt into fertile soil. 

            Once the dirt had become soil, my father went to work on creating an irrigating system that would make watering the area easy and fast, ensuring easy care for the crops he would later be nurturing from the earth. 

            Before my father could begin seeding the ready soil, my mother pulled him from his work to witness the finished barn that my mother had been slaving over with her brushes and paint.  She wanted him to be the first to have a glimpse of her artistic project, and to my father's amusement and joy my mother had went a bit wild with the paints.

            She painted the outside of the barn a creamy, vanilla white that captured the sunlight and gave the barn a celestial glow, but that wasn't all she had painted on the outside of the barn.  Colorful flowers of all sorts covered the bottom half of the barn.  There were red flowers, white flowers, pink flowers, yellow flowers, blue flowers, violet flowers, orange flowers, and many colors between in different shades and tones.  The stems, petals, and leaves were perfect and so detailed that from a distance one might believe them to be real.

            My father might have been dazzled by the outside of the barn, but he was complete blown away when my mother led him to the inside.  The scene he walked into when he entered the barn complete took his breath away.  Never before had he gazed upon such paintings, let alone in his own barn.  It was obvious that my mother had finally let her talent as an artist finally show her true potential and she waited for the right canvas to demonstrate what she was truly capable of painting when she painted the inside of the barn to resemble the ocean's floor that can't be  viewed from above the surface.

            There were a variety of marine life along with seashells, seaweed, coral, and other vegetation that could only be found in the ocean- all surrounded in a deep, ocean blue with faint tints of jade and violet splashed here and there.  Walking into that barn was quite like entering the ocean and viewing everything from an underwater perspective in perfect clarity.  The schools of fish that swam gracefully through the coral and seaweed; tiny, little clown fish peeking out from their homes in the sea anemones; dolphins that playfully chased each other in merriment; majestic sharks that silently stalked the school of tuna. 

            The walls were painted in such detail, that you would hurriedly suck in a breath, believing that you'll begin drowning for you surely are at the bottom of the ocean, only to let out that breath when you realize that the paintings aren't real after all.  The inside of the barn had really been painted in such amazing detail that it was absolutely breath-taking.

            “Astonishing, my love,” were the words to come out of my father's mouth when he was able to find his voice after gazing at the interior of the barn he had built.  “Simply astonishing.”

            With the house and barn finished and the seven acres of dirt turned to soil, my parents began planting seven different seeds together, planting each set of seeds on an acre; corn, tomatoes, lettuce, watermelon, squash, peas, and carrots.  Once all the seeds had been spread over the earth's surface, my parents decided to celebrate with a romantic dinner under the stars where they would be able to glimpse their hard work.  It was a night that both of them would always remember vividly.

            As time went by, those tiny seeds sprouted and grew into a plentiful harvest that both impressed and shocked the people who lived in the nearest town and neighboring farms.  No one believed that my father would be successful in his task of turning the barren, lifeless land into a thriving farm.  When asked how my father had made it possible, he would simply reply, 'All it takes is hard work, determination, and a little magic.' 

            No matter how hard any of the other farmers worked, their crops would never reach the quality or quantity of my father's.  He had a green thumb that could not be matched by any other.

            The joy of such a great and successful first year on their land resulted in my conception.  But the story doesn't really begin here.  In fact, it begins seventeen years after my birth on a hot afternoon day.  Seventeen years worth of harvests and the birth of three other children, my sister and two brothers.