Flash Fiction

The Shovel

Savannah sat among the sand dunes, working with the other children around her, digging through heaps of smooth, flow-out-of-your-hand sand. They walked back and forth with brightly colored buckets, transporting sand from one huge project to another. Savannah’s job was to fill the buckets as fast as she could. Suddenly, while she was working, Savannah’s shovel broke with a loud snap. She turned confidently to her brother, Carter, and told him to give her his shovel. Her job was more important than his anyway. However, Carter stubbornly refused, taunting, “You’re gonna be in trouble with the oracle….”
Savannah was outraged and terrified at the same time. She consulted some of her fellow workers, but none of them had spare shovels either. Growing anxiety filled her. She began to see truth in her brother’s statement. The shovel had been new, a gift from the oracle just that morning. What if the Oracle was unhappy? Suddenly, her fear was replaced with resentment. Why couldn’t Carter just give her the shovel? She was superior in rank and more important to the project. Turning back to Carter, she announced confidently that she was going to report his behavior to the oracle. He glanced at her, and then replied smugly, “It’s you who’ll be in trouble, not me!”
Savannah scowled, then trudged toward the jungle. There was a huge root that you had to climb over, one foot after another, to enter the jungle, but Savannah, in her sulky determination, forgot about it. She walked straight into it, hitting her lower legs, and tumbled forward, straight into the green, wood filled jungle. When she pulled herself together, she noticed a huge gash on her leg. Her eyes filled with tears, but she remembered the cause of her journey. Looking back toward the sand dunes, she realized that there was no chance to turn back now. She pushed herself to her feet and continued on.
As she limped through the jungle, she saw other workers scampering around. She had to walk in a zigzag to avoid being run over, for there were jungle builders everywhere. However, her luck ran out. She did not get out of the way in time to avoid an extremely energetic worker, who crashed into her as he rushed from place to place, continuing up and into another tree. Without the use of her painful leg, she stumbled backwards, slamming into one of the trees. Her head began to ache slightly. She shook her head hard to clear it, gathered herself together, and continued on.
Savannah was nearing where the oracle sat, trying to figure out what to say. She gripped her broken shovel even tighter as she limped up to the oracle, worrying more and more about what the oracle’s response would be.
******
Monica looked up from her conversation to see her five-year-old daughter limping toward her, a neon pink shovel in her hand. Her knee was slightly scraped and some wood chips from the playground clung to her shorts. There was a bump on her head like she had banged it against something.
“Savannah, are you OK?” she cried. “What happened?”
Savannah turned and looked across the wood-chip covered playground, past the jungle gym, and to the wooden edged sand box where her three-year-old brother and several other children still played.
“My shovel broke,” she whined. “And Carter wouldn’t give me his and it was a new shovel and I was so worried that you’d be mad at me and- and-“
“I’m not mad at you,” Monica interrupted. “Now tell me – how did you get all scratched up?
Savannah smiled. “Well, it was a long journey here from the sandbox…”