Cherry Blossom Time

 

❄🤍❄

            It wasn’t really spring yet.  There was still some snow frozen to the branches of the big fir trees. But the days were lightening up. Among the white clouds peeking down from the canopy were winks of brilliant Northwest Blue™.
            Ramona never let the fire go out, because a fire is a very fine thing and really brightens up a day or a night, whatever the season. It’s a bit of a mystery to we hairless, relatively, how the Forest People get on in the cold and wet. There are theories. Ralph never really told Millicent and Ramona didn’t try to tell Nikky Rosen either. It’s one of those things we can indulge in conjecture about. It does seem to have to do with something rather more than haircoats.
            Nevertheless, the fire burned all day and deep into the night. Ralph spent the time when he wasn’t hunting, bringing in firewood.  This had the effect of keeping the great forest tidy. He harvested the deadfall and small trees that didn’t seem to have a future with the MtBSNF. He also collected river driftwood.

            Maybe they absorb the heat and store it somehow. Well, that’s just another theory.
            It was breakfast time. Twigg and the cats were sitting on the ground very near the fire eating something you might call Handcakes. Ralph was still sleepy, but he was there, soaking up the heat maybe.
            Ramona was taking a break, drinking something hot out of one of Ooog’s pottery mugs. She was sitting by Ralph and to tell the truth she was sleepy too. Her head dropped down onto his shoulder.
            Notice anyone missing? Neither did anyone else, as it happens. The one no one was attending to right then, had been extending her weightless escapades just recently. So while the landlubbers sat around the fire, she was practicing a sort of twirling in the current of hot air from the fire.  No one was looking. She went further upward. She could hardly feel her mother’s gravitational pull up where she bobbed, looking like a mass of pale blossoms of some kind.
            Just then an impertinent little wind came prowling near the ground, discovered the fire, and threw itself upward, catching Cherry in the updraft of hot air and wind together. Soon Cherry was a hundred feet in the air, then a hundred and fifty.
            She grabbed a snowy branch. The wind deserted her ascent, and there she clung. Cherry was afraid. She began to cry just as loudly as she could, like any sensible child stranded in the branches of a fir tree at great height most likely would.
            Ramona woke instantly, looking around wildly. She jumped to her feet and yelled, “Ralph! Where is she?” She heard the cries, but didn't realize they came from overhead.
            Ralph woke up. He actually ran around looking all over but did not look up.
            Berry and Bob did look up.  They meowed and growled and nudged Twigg until he looked up also.
            Well, there was Cherry most of the way up a tremendously tall fir. She kind of blended in with the snow.
            “Mommy, look up there,” said Twigg to his mother. “Cherry went up in the tree!”
            “Ralph, look up there,” said Ramona to Ralph. They all looked up there. “Ralph, she’s afraid to float down!”
            Cherry hung on tight and yelled her very best. She dislodged some snow off of the branch, which fell on her family below. Three people and two cats blinked and kept squinting up into the tree.
            As they were all staring up the tree, trying to devise a way to get Cherry down to her usual orbit, Ralph had an idea.
            He filled up his lungs and whistled his greatest whistle. He could hardly escape Maeve normally, but sometime he actually had to call her.
            In about two minutes, Maeve drifted down out of the canopy of tree tops, black and shiny. She landed on Ralph’s left shoulder and turned her eye toward him. Then she looked up into the tree.
            “Oh,” said Maeve. “I see,” she muttered.
            “Maeve can you fly up there and talk her into letting go of that branch and following you down. She likes you,” said Ralph
            “I believe I can do that,” said Maeve, lifting off and heading upward.
            On her way up she chuckled as Ravens do, calling out, “Cherry!  We are going to fly down together! Are you ready? This will be fun!” She landed right next to where Cherry gripped the branch.
            Cherry’s nose was red, and her face was covered in tears. “Mama,” said Cherry. She took a new hold on the branch. More snow fell on the watchers below.
            “Yes, yes. Let’s go to Mama, Cherry,” said Maeve in her softest most beguiling voice.
            “I will hold onto you with my claws. You will let go and we will just float down,” said Maeve, taking the baby’s hand in her claw. She gave her a little Raven nibble on her cheek to make her laugh and Cherry let go of the branch.
            Together the pale gold baby and the huge black Raven came down to earth as softly as a falling leaf. Cherry went straight to her mother’s arms. Twigg and the cats crowded around them.
            Maeve went to Ralph’s shoulder and marched importantly around in circles describing the incident as she marched. Her tail swished from side to side, and she gleamed in the firelight.
            “I owe you Maeve,” said Ralph. “You are the hero of the hour, and that’s as true as I know how to make it!”
            Her black eyes glittered. It’s hard to see if a Raven is smiling, but I think that we can assume she was.