He climbs the hill behind her house wondering if it can be true. Did he really hear her voice, the voice he knew so well from so long ago? Her song fills the air around him, blue and misty like the twilight that he pushes through on his way back into her life, a life she pushed him out of when her fears became too real, when she convinced herself she wasn’t good enough. Then when death came knocking, knocking so hard it broke down the door and she was never the same after that, no amount of prodding or cajoling could convince her otherwise. She simply put away her brushes and her paper, rolled up the unfinished canvases, closed the pan of watercolors, tucked her guitars and drums in the closet behind the winter coats. She was finished. He was abandoned to wander the green lands where they use to meet, where he whispered in her ear of the beauty she could create with her mind, her heart, her hands. He could still feel the hole it left inside her, see the hollowness in her eyes that only knew how to weep after that, could not see any of the beauty they use to, only the fear and the grief – only the emptiness in her heart where love had once lived.
His hands dig into the soft cool earth as he climbs the last few feet out of the ravine. Then he sees her. She is sitting in the flowers singing so softly he knows he is the only one who can hear her. He knows he is the only one she wanted to hear her. So he sits down beside her, fills in the words she can’t think of, touches a few notes she hasn’t thought of, fills her head with all the lost days between them, whispers his joy to be back in her thoughts again, back in her life.
Colors of dawn and summer wrap around them shielding them from the past and a life that could have been. Her music is golden yellow with wings taking it up into the early morning sky, a song of renewal. She is the phoenix and he the ashes. They soar into the rest of her life and neither of them cares anymore if anyone notices their creations. They have the trees for their museum, the birds for their audience. The wind applauses a standing ovation.
He follows her inside happy just to be floating next to her again, filling the hole in her heart, drying the stale tears that have left stains on her cheeks. A whisper, a touch, a breath of midnight blue and she pulls out her brushes, dusts off the yellowed paper, smoothes color and life across its surface. When she is finished he looks down at the image, she whispers and he hears,”For you my beloved Muse – for you.” And glowing off the paper he recognizes the face he has seen reflected in pools of water, off dragonfly wings and her glistening eyes. He sees himself. He sees her muse. And she picks up a river cane flute she has made with her own hands and plays for him.
faeriearth 