Keep Sweet

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Uncle Timothy opened his office door apologized for being late huffed a bit with his girth and ran his hand through thinning hair. He'd had a call at home he said placing his cellphone on the big oak desk with its dark stain and clawed feet. His apartment was an attached unit but separate from his house. </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Elizabeth </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>thought of how nice it would be to have a second home of one's own away from the ocean of family. Uncle Timothy's chair creaked when he sat. </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Elizabeth</span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> looked at her lap. </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Let us pray. Uncle Timothy asked God's guidance in carrying out the command as it was recently revealed in Timothy's vision.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>A rolling muscle cramp curled up </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Elizabeth</span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'s midsection; she knew what a vision meant. She placed her open palm on her tummy felt the row of pearly blue buttons. She'd felt grown the day she'd picked out the fabric and the buttons. And more grown when she'd finished the dress. Her grandmother inspected the hem and pronounced it perfectly even. Look at those stitches her mother had said with pride. </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>But in the office of the Prophet she felt she was a child.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)></span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Elizabeth</span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Uncle Timothy said with a broad smile this is a happy day. God has revealed your eternal partner to me. You will be wed next year to Travis Lyman sealed for all time and eternity.</span></p><p></p><p>__</p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Elizabeth Warren is a fourteen-year-old living in the Community with her father four mothers and sixteen siblings. The prophet Uncle Timothy controls all facets of the cult. He assigns young girls to marry far older men with whom they will have numerous children. When he has a vision that Elizabeth will marry her nineteen-year-old cousin she has no choice. Demanding submission of both body and soul the prophet destroys lives under the guise of correcting souls.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)> </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(26 26 24 1)>Smart but poorly educatedElizabeth at first submits to her fate. Observant she realizes no one is happy: two of her moms love one another but are not free to express this; another is pulling the family apart in her effort to get free. As Elizabeth better understands the prophet's manipulation of community members she joins forces with her twin brother her older sister and two good friends to free her family from the psychological and spiritual abuse of an evil man. With their prophet two steps ahead of them and holding all the power Elizabeth realizes they need outside help which requires telling the dark secret of her life.</span></p><p></p>