Chapter Text
Cinnamon Tree
The evening light dimmed into darker blues and deep purples, the sun taking refuge behind the gentle curve of land like a child being tucked into bed. The dew hadn’t set in yet, the wind soft and carrying the fresh scent of tilled dirt. The buzzing of cicadas, getting fewer as the season advanced, accompanied the rustling of dry leaves underfoot like the worlds most natural jazz band. Her hands rested on the porch wood, the flaky varnish leaving tiny bits of itself in her fingerprints. The step creaked as the house moved, settling for the coming night.
Her eyes were focused on the tall tree set amidst the field of rye, her mind still picturing the way the ebbing sunlight had filtered through the sparse leaves, the wind dancing amongst the boughs and branches, captivating her. She had been mesmerised, broken from her spell of aching memory to wonder at the tree. When she had been younger she’d never stopped at this time of day, never paused to study the art of nature, beauty in chaotic randomness.
Instead she’d played in the grass with Lucy, pawprints and footprints left in ground softened by light rain from the night before, thin scars left on legs and arms when she chased her through the brush, the rough passageway of bushes and trees no match for her and Lucy’s enthusiasm. Those brown eyes usually so alert and eager, droopy and half closed when they’d return inside, muddied and scratched, smiles shining even as her mother had fussed over her messy hair and torn clothes.
Lucy would get brushed by her and inspected for errant seeds, leaves and bits of nature that had stowed away in her glossy coat of fur. She would take a bath, clean and tired and warm in her pyjamas. And they would both climb into bed, Lucy resting her head on her stomach, and she would sleep with the knowledge that her and Lucy would play again tomorrow and all was right with the world.
Now, though her youth was past her, she admired the things she missed in her hurry to grow and explore. The slow quiet had settled over the porch like a blanket, not even the cicadas chirping anymore, and the dusk light shadowed the tree in a cloak of blue, almost melancholic in its reflection of her own memories.
It stood sentinel as the night collapsed upon the fields, a silhouette of something more than her and her world. A guardian to her quaint house, the one who grew as she grew and grew older, who watched as one by one her loved ones said their goodbyes to her world, until it was just her and the tree and the sky.
Finally, she looked at the rough pile of rocks at the base of the tree, her favourite rocks, and she could almost read the name she’d carved into the trunk of her tree, the one she’d put there with the taste of salt on her lips and eyes running, her tree’s blood cementing Lucy’s name into its body and heart.
Her tree, her Lucy, forever watching over her, and she knew tonight she would sleep soundly like all those years ago.