The water boiled. I poured it into my mug over the tea bag that floated until it became saturated and sank to the bottom. Even though our pellet stove had been glowing hot for at least an hour, it hadn’t made a dent in the cool morning. The steam from my Lemon Zinger curled up and up. At least my hands were warm against the hot porcelain.

I walked to our patio door and looked out into our yard. Although trying, the sun hadn’t come up yet. Or maybe it would be an overcast day. Regardless, everything outside was gray/brown blurs lacking depth in the predawn light. As I scanned the familiar lines of our trees and bushes, my heart stopped. Something out there was not familiar. Its shape, height, shade—nothing about it was familiar. It did not belong. My heart sped up yet I froze in place. While nothing else in our yard moved, it did. Was it moving towards the house? Towards me? Did it see me standing here in the patio door?

My mind scanned through the things it should be – a deer, the neighbor’s dog, something covered in a tarp that Mitch had left out last night. But nothing fit. Rational me said monsters do not exist, fantastical creatures that eat women standing in front of patio doors drinking herbal tea do not exist. But irrational me trembled.

Mitch keeps a pair of binoculars handy to watch his Bluebird boxes and to study everything that wanders through our yard. Out of the corner of my eye I saw them on the dining room table, only two steps away. But, and this was most curious to me, I was afraid to grab them. Rational me said that focusing the binoculars on the monster would solve the mystery, show I had nothing to fear. Irrational me, for some reason I don’t understand, feared knowing the truth.

Rational me won the battle. With each adjustment of the lenses the monster became crisp, real. In the foreground of a bayberry bush, a doe stood patiently as her fawn nursed, her head the only thing moving as she constantly surveyed the area for threats. Peaceful. Beautiful.

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt  –Jenifer Adams-Mitchell