Not As It Seems Part One (Fiction)

"You aren't coming with us, it's not safe." Tara said.

"We've been a hundred times before." I looked at my sister, with pleading eyes.

"Not since the accident." Tara looked at me, but I wasn't backing down, it had been a year and a half since the accident, since I hadn't felt coddled. I was now thirteen, but I had more freedom when I was free."

"The path is wide enough." I said, gripping the wheels of my chair, a year and a half since the doctor had come in grim faced, with the words "Parapalegic, paralyzed from the waist down." It wasn't the wheelchair that defined me though, it was the way other people treated me.

"You know Mom, will have my hyde, but I agree with you, you aren't helpless. Let's go."

The woods had been our playground even as little kids. We knew better than to venture to far in, but we loved the woods. I breathed in the scent of dirt and trees.

"Thank you." I said to my sister. "Thank you for not treating me as if I'm going to break, the way everyone else does."

"Mother was just so afraid she was going to loose you, we all were. The accident wasn't something that Mom had control of, it wasn't something any of us had control of. She still carries the guilt for letting you go with Andrea and her family that day."