Velas (The Velas stories are remembrances of our life in Chile written by Havilah the oldest Goodenough daughter)

Mama wants me to post this story even though I'm currently posting it on my story blog. Sometimes I mix in true stories with my fictional ones, and even though they're often less exciting, they're just as interesting. So I guess it's like a blog post, written like a story.

I was swinging outside. The swing itself was a complicated arrangement, going over two branches on two trunks of the same tree and being attached to yet another tree, a pine. This was so that when I wanted to swing high up, I just attached the seat to both ends of the rope.

I sat on the board with the rope going up between my legs, balanced perfectly. Starting at one side I calculated how many times I could spin before I landed on the pine tree around on the other side. Then, just at the right moment, I pushed off. I leaned in and wrapped my body tighter together, feeling like the rope between my hands was an extension of my body. It and I were one, working together to send me flying around the tree, spinning in slow motion, my head passing at five feet and then five inches away from the hard trunk.

I remembered colliding with it before. Realizing that I wasn't going to finish the spin right, I had stuck out a leg at the right moment to make my back be the part that hit. The impact was extremely hard, but not painful. I had seen Naphti hit it half as hard the same way and felt sincerely concerned, but he was just as fine as I was. The thrill of that danger was part of what made it so fun.

I counted how many times I spun. One... two, three, one more made four. As I bent the rope slightly in my left hand and let my feet down, my right hand let go and floated up in the brilliant exultation of this wonderful moment.