Nita brushed sweat from her forehead with a half-sleeve, then pushed both hands into a large tub thick with shrimp. She turned the shrimp over in groups, rinsing them beneath the cool water her younger sister Mya poured from a bucket.

The strains of a violin drifted from the path near the lake, and Nita let the sound relax her as she pulled a clean shrimp from the pile and popped off the head. The little food shanty she owned with her sisters would be busy with customers before the sun finished yawning.

Bea, the youngest sister, sauntered from the shanty’s open back door, as usual in no hurry to help with the day’s catch. “Where’s Kenny?” Bea asked, squinting in the direction of Kenny’s violining. “Why ain’t he over here helping?”

“You’re one to question somebody else’s workin,” Mya said in her low, sweet voice. “Sit down and start shelling and leave the boy to his music. He’s so good even the birds come to hear him.”

Nita smiled to herself while her wet fingers flew over hard shells and soft flesh. Her Kenny sure could play, and with that violin he’d never spend his adult days sweating behind a shanty shop for a meager living.

Bea dropped her crate near the tub and sat. “Birds? Those are pigeons.”

“Same difference.”

“Nu-unh. It’s like calling moths butterflies. Everybody knows moths ain’t butterflies.”

“What’s moths got to do with anything?” Mya said. “When birds come to sing and dance with a boy and his instrument, it’s God’s way of saying that’s what he was made to do. Just like you having two hands separate from yo mouth means you was made to talk and work at the same time, Bea.”

Bea picked up a shrimp with slow ease. “If those birds were pretty like doves or herons, maybe. But pigeons are beggar birds. If aint nothing but pigeons flocking to him, maybe what God’s really saying is he’ll be no better than—”

“Bea.” The empty shell Nita tossed in the bucket landed with a faint crackle. She pushed her shoulders back, her muscles aching after so much bending over.

The violin sang an extended, mournful note, as if entreating Nita to choose her words carefully. She looked at her baby sister. So pretty. So careless.

“That is your nephew,” Nita said. “My son. What the world will say to and about him don’t hold a candle to what comes from his own. You will speak life to your nephew, ya hear? You will speak life over my son.” She gestured toward the sky. “Moths and pigeons are just as much God’s creation as the rest of ‘em, so don’t ever again speak such as to cast doubt on my Kenny’s worth.”

And she resumed shelling the shrimp with fervor, ignoring her sister’s stunned expression and listening to her son’s gift breathe on the wind.

*This is the third story (written previously during a 10 minute prompt response session) in my Stories Along the Way series. There was a young boy in the original image and there were birds around him, but he didn’t have a violin. The ten minute timer found me at “no better than,” but I knew where I was going with the moral of this story so I added the end later. “Speak life” is a phrase I’m passionate about and a principle I live by, because “life and death are in the power of the tongue.” ~Proverbs 18:21

What’s a principle you hold near and dear?