Emerald City Dreamer Read Online Free PDF

the bread products - hamburger buns, bagels, and sourdough - into a duct-tape-patched cardboard box. Reduce, reuse and recycle, and do it for the Lord.
    He silently turned back towards the dumpster to receive produce from Benjamin: cabbage, lettuce, apples, onions, potatoes, and more bread. It was almost enough to make him smile. They usually never found this much, since stores often gave their expired items to charity.
    " The boxes are full, Brother," Ezra softly called. He ran his hand nervously through his tousled light brown hair and over horns he felt but knew Ben couldn't see.
    " What's that? Ah. Well we can't take any more than that on our bikes anyway. Yahweh provides!" Brother Benjamin swung a leg over the side of the dumpster and hoisted himself out.
    Their bicycles were in good working order, even though they looked as though they'd just been pulled out of the dumpster, too. Each had a small cargo platform mounted over the back wheel where they could strap the overflowing boxes. With a wobbly start, they peddled off towards Congregation. They had a long way to go, up and down hills, on and off connecting buses.
    Most members of The Wanderers were adults. Ezra was the eldest, or at least the tallest, of the nine children rescued from the streets by Brother Isaiah's ragtag group of nomads. He assumed his age was around sixteen, but he couldn't be certain. The youngest, Eve, was possibly thirteen. Like him, they had once been as cast off as this food, runaways, homeless souls now saved from crime, prostitution, or worse.
    Ezra didn't say much and Benjamin was tired of carrying both sides of the conversation, so they mostly rode in silence except for Benjamin's occasional quoting aloud of scripture. Ezra hadn't learned much about the Bible before joining the group, so he listened and absorbed, grateful for any learning he could get. Elder Isaiah had called these words of God "pearls", even though sometimes they didn't make much sense to him.
    The trappings of suburbia surrounded Cougar Mountain Regional Wildlands Park the way the evils of the world surrounded the Wanderers. Brothers Benjamin and Ezra walked their bikes down a well-maintained woodland trail, holding the handlebars with one hand and steadying their heavy payload with the other.
    Not far into their journey, they paused where a small tree grew atop a crumbling stump. They turned sharply right, stepping over low-growing huckleberry bushes, and carefully wheeled their bikes between chest-high sword ferns, being careful not to trample a new path over the compacted pine needles. After the short distance of bushwhacking, they reached another trail, hidden and unmaintained. Park services had intentionally abandoned it years ago and planted foliage to block the entrances: an attempt to preserve this portion of the park for wildlife.
    The Lord does provide.
    They leaned their bikes against two tall pines, and returned to check for any sign that they had just rumbled through with bicycles.
    The back path made bike-handling much more difficult, as it rose and fell more steeply. None of the trails had been made for bikes, especially not loaded with food, but Ezra, fortunately, was strong.
    Benjamin walked with his head down. Ezra instead took every opportunity to notice the forest that everyone else overlooked in their pursuit of God. To Ezra, God wouldn't be found in scripture half as much as He proved himself through twig and vine, just as surely as God could be found in the crisp mountain air, just before rain.
    God grew in that small tree that marked this path, in the way its roots spread over the mossy stump like a tablecloth over an end table. He bubbled in the distant creek. He was the sunshine that broke through the dense cover and played with the two-thousand shades of green and brown below. He crawled across the path in the form of a finger-length brown banana slug, leaving behind him a road of eldritch slime. He painted the moss over everything, as if he