It was the end of the day.
The fair and industrious Trudy was sitting in the green recliner with her feet up. She was reading a book. I was sitting in the beige recliner reading my book. Periodically she would chuckle and sometimes laugh out loud.
I turned to watch her. She was smiling and chortling and wiggling in her feet, focusing so intently that she didn’t catch me spying.
After a while, I returned to my book. The centuries-old civilization was falling apart, their great libraries burned, their society fractured, their future crumbling before their eyes. As I read the final chapters, the grim story got worse.
The family was breaking. The goons were ascendant. The village was razed to the ground, the villagers killed by soldiers told to leave no trace of the place on the map. And little Yazid was killed by the captain on his horse as the boy invited the man to the family compound.
As I closed the cover, I had tears streaming down my cheeks.
I need to change the things I read. I want something to chuckle at.