A Little Conversation

 

Photo by R. A. Bird

            It was one of those mid-winter days when the sun shines almost painfully brightly on banks of snow. It might make a person feel like some remote planet, hot on one side and icy cold on the other.
            As you can imagine, Twigg had a lot on his mind. He had seen marvels in his relatively short life, though to him they were only business as usual within the confines of the Great Forest, as ruled by Ralph.
            The business with Rose, whom he had named and blessed in old form Saslingua, had left him wandering and wondering. He’d had no idea that naming her and singing to the fishy girl would change her as it had.
            Ramona could see that he was working on something, but she didn’t try to do it for him. Ralph let Twigg wander around thinking too.
            Berry and Bob just looked at each other when Twigg walked right past them. If cats shrugged, they would  have shrugged and raised their eyebrows. They missed their boy. He was there, of course, but distracted.
            Suddenly, Twigg stopped pacing and looked around at where he found himself. He wasn’t aware of how he had gotten there, but there he was, a little past Ralph’s big cedar log. No one seemed to be around at first. Then he saw Cherry!
She had fallen asleep in a brilliant shaft of sunlight shining down through the firs. Not even birds could nap in midair, but Cherry could!
            Blue was also asleep, but in the same beam of sunlight where it struck the snowy forest floor, creating a nice spot for a wolf to nap in
            “Cherry!” whispered Twigg. “Your sun spot is moving away. Better wake up!”
            She heard him and looked down at him. She looked startled.
            “I didn’t really mean to go to sleep up here. I was trying to show Blue how to come up with me, but she didn’t learn how and I got so sleepy!” said Cherry. “I thought maybe I could just pull her up with me and hold her up here and she could stay.”
            Twigg laughed. He was picturing Blue sailing serenely through the air, but he couldn’t quite get it to work for him. In fact, he giggled for the first time in many days.
            “I don’t think Blue will ever be able to float like you do!”
            “Twigg,” said Cherry, “I was afraid when you left that morning.”
            “I thought you probably were,” he said. “But I didn’t know what else to say to you.”
            “I think you picked the right thing to say. It was simple and plain. Whenever I would start to think about being afraid I would remember that you said not be afraid. So, I decided to trust you,” said Cherry in a rather long speech for Cherry.                 

            “Then I would sort of forget about being afraid.”
            “I didn’t know where I was going either. But I was curious, and I thought it might be important to go and find out,” said Twigg.
            “Was it important?” she asked.
            “In a way. But it’s hard to explain,” said Twigg. “It was about Rose.”
            Cherry slowly drifted down to ground level, and Blue woke up, sensing her presence.
            “I know,” said Cherry, and she smiled a wise, nosy little sister’s smile.
            Also, smiling, Maeve watched them silently from a branch high over their heads . She was just watching over them because she loved them. Then, when Twigg and Cherry and Blue walked down the path to the fireplace, Maeve herself floated along behind them like a sort of corvid angel.

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