text: C Kelemen The Birth of Death Winter Meets the Mill to the real tortoise, who tells the first clue. 
   
   
   Eggs  
   Oh... jeez; my head is throbbing, I'm sweating heavily, and my arms hurt. I guess that happens though when you’re holding up a piece of heavy machinery for about an hour. It's weird how it started coming down on the eggs all by its self. It was like the mill and machinery in it, had their own minds. As if at night the mill came alive. Finally I was able to move it away from the eggs. Then the tortoise from earlier came into the mill through a small space in the wall. The eggs started to shake, this can't be good. 
   
   
   
   Birth  
   Lines were cracking all over the place but there was no special design to it. The shaking stopped. The eggs were breaking and as they broke the tiny animals inside didn't move. It was not only their birth but also their death. They weren't surviving the temperature they came out to. The poor tortoise watched as all the babies died before her. I could no longer just stand and watch. So, as the last one started to break, I gently picked it up and carried it under my arm. It's head popped out and it kept making such adorable small noises. It was a little too cute for me but then again I could use a little bit of cute right now. 
   
   
   
   Death's Shimmer 
   The tortoise crawled into my pocket enjoying the warmth. As soon as I was sure that I could move around safely I did. Then, I saw it a small glow above a machine. It was like twelve thousand lightning bugs trying to show me something important. This glow started blinking and then I saw another spot where a different kind of glow had appeared, right in front of some switch. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. The first glow I saw though seemed to hypnotize me. It seemed to dance on a breeze as it came closer to me. Only then did I notice it wasn't a glow. It was the innocence of a child, the whisper of the wind, the breath of death, and the shimmer of a life. I thought I could hear the gears turning in my head, until I realized that it wasn't in my head. The shimmer was only inches away from me, like a fox waiting for the right moment to pounce. I closed my eyes ready to feel Death. 
   
   
   Text: kelemen Images: google All rights reserved. Publication Date: April 15th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-r16ckelemen