True Romance

It was the kind of walk she always imagined going on with company. The snow fell around her in massive flakes, settling like a thick, felt-like sheet upon everything in the woods. The evergreens were draped in white, the path was a padded carpet and everything smelled fresh. It was a perfect October day in the northern country, except that she was alone.

Her mind wandered as she stared up into the heavens and the falling sky. Absentmindedly she stuck her tongue out from between her teeth to catch the crystals was they drifted past. She gazed into the heavy, wintry clouds. This would be so romantic. Her mind had begun to think about him again; the object of her fictional love life, her someday husband. He would love this walk... she just knew it.

On days like this she tended to get caught up in daydreams of him. She stared up, high, as though trying to look through the clouds and into heaven itself. "Why are you keeping him from me, God?"

She had posed this question in her mind many times before, but here in this vacant wood she finally let it slip out, aloud. The truth was that she was disparately lonely in her heart. She felt like a huge part of her was missing, as though... if she could only capture that one out-of-reach thing she would be completely and purely happy. She was sure it was love.

She crested a hill and looked down into a familiar rocky clearing. A private exposure of the Great Canadian Shield, rimmed in tall, sturdy spruce and pine. This place had become a kind of friend to her, changing in the rhythm of the seasons and yet remaining ever the same. Someday she would take him here. Someday she would share this. Her question came to mind again, this time on the wind of a melody so often embraced by her heart. She closed her eyes and whispered the lyrics to the falling snow. "I get down on my knees and I start to pray til the tears run down from my eyes! Lord, somebody - please, somebody? Can anybody find me - somebody to love?"

It wasn't a comfortable combination. Something about the still beauty of the setting seemed to recoil at the 70's rock song. She walked into the middle of the clearing. It almost seemed... grieved.

"What's wrong?" she said, suddenly unsettled in the place that had always calmed her spirit and brought a peaceful smile to her face. The cloudy sky seemed to darken, to deepen, like a pair of eyes beginning to brim with tears. In the pit of her stomach, in the back of her heart, as though the air itself took the form of language and presented the thought to her mind, she heard an answer - almost like the still, small voice she had been training to hear.

"He will not fill your heart like I can fill it."

She paused, closed her eyes and tried to focus the grey of her mindspace, on nothing but that sound, that phantom voice, that ...angelic... voice.

"No mere mortal can love you like Me. I am the Great Lover, the Architect and Author of Romance. This place, this edenic refuge - this is my bouquet to you, my gift, a sign my doting affection. Be careful, o daughter, not to misplace the responding admiration."

She opened her eyes and looked again at the not-so-familiar grove. A circular gap in the clouds revealed the flood of the full moon's light and for a moment everything caught in it's beam shimmered and glistened like the dust of a polished blue gem. The vision stole her breath away.

"I love you," whispered the voice, fading ever softer as the clouds moved to cloak the moon again. "I have always loved you, from before you were, and I will love you for the endurance of eternity." And then she was again, quiet and still, standing in the middle of the clearance.

She said nothing aloud, neither to the voice nor the trees. She did nothing but breathe for a time: in and out, deep and full, cleansing, lifting, washing her spirit through.

And then she walked on; through the paths that wound around the clearing, and back home, she walked, quietly, reverently, no longer longing for something else. No longer alone.

Concrete Footsteps

It was on her way to the bus stop that she first noticed the footprints. They seemed haphazard, somewhat unintentionally laid down, almost as though by chance or mistake. She was in a hurry and so for a few days she didn’t think about the impressions in her sidewalk. On Wednesday she noticed them again. Her mind began to wonder, but her schedule demanded speed and she ran on to the bus stop once more and for a few days she again thought nothing of them. Then Saturday came.

Saturday was a day for catching up on the things that had simply flown by during the rest of the week. On Saturdays she tended to her room and her laundry, she wrapped up a little reading, she took a nap and she picked up the necessary groceries. This Saturday she needed milk.

On her way to the store she busied her mind by carefully studying the coins in her hand. She was fiddling with them; organizing them first by size, then colour, then value. Before too long she tired of that game and she began to toss them into the air, one by one, higher and higher as a test against her own hand-eye coordination. On her seventh toss she misjudged the distance and her quarter rolled along its edge for a few feet, into a small groove in the sidewalk. As she bent down to retrieve her money, she recognized the groove – it was the heel of one of the footprints that she had noticed previously in the week. Although she had quickly shrugged them off before, something about them seemed almost enchanting, capturing her attention and exciting a strange curiosity in her mind. Who was the one to take these steps... and where have they gone since?

Without quite acknowledging why, she sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk. She brushed away the crisp, red fallen leaves from the trail of prints that was within her reach. She smiled, observing the wide spacing, the deep toe and nigh invisible heel. This person had been running for the bus. She pulled her legs up to her chest, putting her right foot into the sidewalk’s dent. Probably a boy, she thought. At least three sizes bigger than mine. She lifted her chin and started staring at the feet of those who passed her, curiously. Maybe he’s moved away, or maybe he lives close by. Does he stare at his feet when he runs this path? Does he ever think about the day his sneakers stuck to the road? Maybe he’s someone I know or that I’ve passed before, maybe even on this street, even on this sidewalk... I wonder where he is now.

Her mind ran unbridled for ten minutes, pondering the mysterious boy who could have possibly made the concrete footsteps that she was sitting beside, until an acorn interrupted the daydream. She looked up.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a whisper, as though it were a terribly secret, espionage meeting at the edge of the street. He smiled broadly, tossing another large oak seed up into the air. “You’ve been sitting here for nearly a half hour.”

“You’ve been watching me for a half hour?” She stared at him with a mildly embarrassed expression. She had never seen this person before and yet he seemed familiar. “Oh no,” he replied in a grin, “longer than that. I’ve been watching you on and off for weeks. I just haven’t had the opportunity to say hello.” He knelt down and offered his hand. “Hello.”

She was at a loss for how to respond. Was this a handshake or a hand up? Was he an admirer or creep? Could she really have been sitting outside so long? She shook his hand hesitantly. “Pleased to meet you...” “As I am pleased to meet you,” he replied with a nod of assurance. She had expected an introduction, but instead he just shook her hand a moment, looking unwaveringly into her eyes. It was an intimidating thing, to have so much attention paid to you without apology or explanation, but there was a mischievous sort of glimmer in his eyes that held her gaze. “So,” he said, releasing her hand, “What is so fascinating about this particular pavement?”

With impressively few stumblings she told him about the footprints. “All that from five-and-a-half steps in the concrete,” he mused. “And you almost have the whole story.”

He let a few beats pass before he laughed aloud and answered her look. He traced one of the footsteps with his fingers. “Once upon a time,” he began, softly, “there was a very handsome, intelligent, independent, tough young man. He lived not long ago and far away, but only just over there, even at this very moment.” He waved his hand over her shoulder. “The young man was indeed independent and he thought happily so, but alas loneliness invaded his aloneness and over time he came to feel the need of a young lass to share in the adventures of his life, and to give his toughness and braveness cause. One morning, on his daily quest for higher education, he spied a maiden so beautiful that he was frozen in place, at the gate of his humble castle. She was walking away from him, towards a neighbouring palace, carrying a jug. She was a milkmaid, it seemed, but more stunning than any princess he had ever seen, and she at once stole his very heart. The next day, and the next, and the next he watched as she passed him, sometimes accompanied by other women of her court and sometimes wandering the kingdom alone. Eventually his Squire could keep quiet about his observations no longer. “Sire,” said Squire, “Why don’t you simply pursue the fair maiden?” “Squire,” said Sire, “You’re a genius.” And so, on a quest for the milkmaid he went. He waited for her by the drawbridge of his castle. For hours he stood vigil, waiting for her to appear. At last she did, moving at an incredible pace... she was running... running away from him. At once the young man leapt to his feet and dashed on after his fair lady, not knowing what he would say if he was able to catch up. The thought of an awkward encounter crossed his mind fleetingly, but he pressed on. She was a full block ahead of him, and so focused was he on catching her that he failed to see the perilous situation directly in front of him. The bus was coming, the girl was running and suddenly his armored feet were met with a terrible resistance. He looked down quickly – a trap! The ground was trying to swallow him whole! He looked up and with a great and strenuous effort he pulled up his feet and ran with all his might... and missed the bus by eleven seconds.”

She laughed. “Did you just make that up?” He smiled. “No. I’ve been sitting in the throne room for days trying to put it together. But it’s mostly true, you know.” “Well,” said the maiden, “Before I sat down here... I was, in fact, going for some milk.” He stood and offered her his hand once more. “Can I carry it for you?” She smiled. With all of her imagining, day dreaming, fantasizing and speculation, this was the last place she expected to end up after following those footprints. “Good knight,” she whispered, “that would be lovely.”

The Lemon’s Aide

Living a life in constant yellow can be a wearying existence. When you’re yellow, people expect you to carry on as though every moment of your life is bathed in sunshine from dawn ‘til dusk, but the truth is that even Yellows have blue days. Just ask Lemon.

Lemon was a tough guy to peel. Although bright and smooth in appearance, he often struggled with keeping up with the expectation of being the life of everybody’s party. He compared himself too frequently to Banana and Passionfruit – one admired for his form and one for flavour – but even with this self-troubling habit most others in the fruit basket couldn’t see past his goofiness to the sour pit he was feeding. Lemon was sad – but when you’re so yellow, there’s no opportunity to show off some of the other colours that are experienced just below the surface. The pinks of love, the reds of anger, the blues of melancholy and the oranges of adventurousness never saw the sun on Lemon’s peel... but before too long there was another colour that began to seep out from his core.

“Lemon,” Papaya commented one afternoon, “You’re looking a little lime... are you okay?” Lemon did what he could to let the comment roll off his back: “I’m fine, I just need a little more Vitamin D, that’s all.”

But sunshine wasn’t enough to stop Lemon’s greenness from spreading. In a few days, everyone had noticed – and they began to talk. “I know he’s been hanging out with the Veggies recently,” Tomato said to Peach as they watched Lemon roll slowly from one side of the basket to the other. “Maybe the Broccoli has been rubbing off on him a little too much?”

Lemon’s friends tried to cheer him up and get his yellow back, but they couldn’t figure out the root problem. Lemon was looking more and more lime everyday and everyone was worried. “Is he... rotting?” a little grape asked. The response was uncertain. “He’s sick, honey... tired maybe, maybe more.”

It had been nearly three weeks from the time that Lemon’s hue began to darken to the day Radish got thrown in with the fruits. “Are you a squash?” Radish asked, quite innocent of the gradual pigmented depression Lemon had found himself in. She based her observation solely on that which could be observed: the once yellow Lemon was now a very dark blueish-greyish-green colour, quite like that of Butternut. “I’m a lemon,” said Lemon.

Radish furrowed her eyebrows. “What has happened to your sunshine?” Lemon sighed heavily, brimming with tears. The dimples that had once served to highlight his cheer now seemed to emphasize the depth of his creases and the weight in his eyes. “I’ve lost it,” Lemon confessed. “It’s been gone for a terrible long time.”

Radish smiled gently. “I will help you find it again.”

Radish listened while Lemon told her about his deep blue. He spoke of the wear his friends had on him at times, of no fault of their own, but which nevertheless caused Lemon to tire. He confided in Radish and for a long time while she said nothing with neither tear nor smile; she simply listened. Little by little, Lemon’s grey lightened. The blue faded and the green disappeared. Little by little, Lemon was yellowing. When he had explained everything that he had been keeping to himself and all pressure had been released, he laughed. Radish smiled back. She seemed... different, somehow.

Before Lemon had a chance to inquire, Radish nodded quietly and tipped her head just a little to one side. “Did you know,” she began, as though it were a question, “that colours are contagious? They have an amazing quality about them that is transferable – blues and yellows and even pinks – they can be passed on or pulled in my others. You’ve gotten much yellow back, and I’m got some of that now too! But I also took on a bit of your blue and a little green, to help you get rid of it. So that’s why I look a little odd – I’m brighter, but also darker than when I arrived here. More the colouring of an unusually ripe apple, than a radish, you might say.”

“But I don’t want you to be blue or green,” Lemon said. Radish smiled. “It’s okay Lem... it’s what friends do. We share the good and the bad, the blue and the yellow. We trade off and balance out and compliment. It’s our design.”

Lemon gave Radish a hug, which may seems strange to you until you remember that a radish is rarely a radish in such tales and such tales are rarely told with the simple intention of entertainment; rather that they often come prepared with an applicable punch: When life gives you Lemons, be the Lemon’s aide.