A cool breeze shifts my heavy dark brown hair from behind my ears to my right shoulder. Walking along the mossy log fence built long ago by persons unknown, the only thing I can hear is the sound of loose pebbles from the dirt road shifting underneath my bare callused feet.
Twiddling with a small red rock in my strong tan hand, it was leaving small scrapes in my palm, turning it, flecks of mica shimmer, buried too deep to pick out. I step off the path, a great error according to little red ridding hood, I continue any way.
On to the grand ancient meadow, long grass clinging to my flowing cobalt dress, I gather the cotton so I could run, fast. As I do, my long legs stretching, reaching, barely touching the long soft grass; I could compare to a gazelle, a graceful leaping caper. The breeze, now warm due to the sun, is holding my long waves of dark hair behind my head, white flowers nip at my toes bending to greet me.
I run and sprint, leap and laugh right to the elderly ash tree, its knots the size of my knee and larger; branches reaching up and touching the azure sky. Slowly I step on the balls of my feet towards the roots, dropping my folds I raise one hand up the rough bark finding a grip, I reach the other to a knot, the small red rock still enclosed in two fingers. I pick my hard foot to a very low knob and start to scale the tree, scrapes covering my arms and knees, bark falling into my hair. Reaching a branch, I swing my legs up, bending them and hanging like a monkey. Straining my arm and stomach muscles I reach to seize yet another branch and pulling I lift my feet up also, to the next branch and the next until I arrive at the summit of the great tree. Looking around I can see my large white farmhouse down the long dirt road, and the old mossy fence that separated the ‘made’, from life.
It was the prefect moment, a colossal ash tree in the midst of a vast prairie of white flowers and tall golden grass. A girl, long and lean yet dainty all the same, her dark hair blowing gently to one side with the wind, her dress caught and tangled in the branches. Small blue butterfly’s flitter through the air, the last of the summer.
Thinking this I wonder if I threw this small red rock, the only red rock around, (I’ve checked!) if someone would find it, possibly me in future tense. Twirling it through my hands I ready fire, tense and as I release I watch the rock ark and twirl, interrupting a butterfly’s pattern, and disappear in the grass, some where in the southern side of the meadow.
I watch nothing for what seems like ages, time moving with the breeze. Gradually nightfall is upon me, yet I wait still in the crown of the tree, for absolutely nothing at all. Then again every impulse comes for a reason, whether that reason be known or not.
The butterfly’s take refuge in the flowers, and just in time too, darkness engulfs everything the second the grand sun shifts to the other side of the earth, replaced by a bursting flaxen moon. Tiny flashing lights fill the vicinity, lightning bugs. I repel half way down the trunk, then impatient, I jump the remaining four feet; my calf’s stinging from the impact. Again I sprint through the tall, tall grass fanning my hands in-between the dancing patterns of the twinkling lights. Their night was just beginning, mine just ending.