there was once a little girl who was born into the world tres curious. She would look around and listen and explore and come back with special treasures, gifts for the ones she loved. She loved stories of faraway places, English school stories best of all, where they had blazers and hats for this, and lacrosse sticks and tennis shoes for that, and all manner of bits and pieces to make life complicated and easy and elegant. She loved stories about the hedgerows and blackberries, the roses and the heavy bumblebees, the sweet honeysuckle that grew on the wooden garden gate and, after she'd got a whiff of it, that heady aroma of chaff.
As she looked and she listened and loved and grew taller, she took all the knowing that there were fuschia fairies, and helpful household brownies, and in the whisper of the trees some sort of language you could understand, and midnight feasts!, and that the leaves of the oak were particularly good for wiping away tears, especially if one was holding tightly to it's big, fatherly arm-branch.
And so kept growing... Somewhere she learned to share with people who understood, which was beautiful and wonderful! then she took that somewhere else and it wasn't welcome, not at all, and this was hurtful: not just to her feelings, but to her body's very survival! So for a very long time she tried to forget that the trees had something to say to her, and she said, instead, "i don't have to listen to anyone. all i have to do is get by." and get by she did, and because she had always been so very good at looking and listening, she was able to make a pretty bon job of a life in the convenient modern world. (which you could guess here, meant more listening to people in the modern world, who had the know-how- oh yes!, and less to fairies, and trees)
Do you think for a moment, when she walks on by now... with a proper job and a household to run and (oh! the car needs fuel; and oh! really must plan holiday), that where the fuschia fairies laughed and played while she watched with big open eyes and almost (but not quite) disbelief, and where she helped the (very ugly, but oh so funny and kind!) brownies shine school shoes before the rest of her family awoke... that they themselves, the fairies and the brownies, sigh in sorrow and toss in their beds when they should have been asleep hours ago? That they miss her thinking of them, at all, at all?
Maybe (just an idea, as if it mattered at all) when the wind blows through the oak leaves there is a sense of loss. Or is it just in his big-strong arm branch- for what is strength for, if not for a girl to climb and hold on to? And the leaves whisper to themselves, ever so quietly, that they miss the salty brine of tears that don't understand why they are unhappy.
will they all ever be friends again?
