Category: STORIES

“Hello,” said the blue poison-arrow frog.

“Hello,” said the wolf.

The wolf sniffed at the humid, warm air.

“You look lost. Your undercoat is too thick for this forest,” said the blue poison-arrow frog.

“I am lost,” said the wolf. “It was winter, and snowing, and the blizzards were worse than Mother could ever remember, and there were no deer, no elk, no rabbit.  And we found meat, but it smelled wrong, but Mother said to eat, and my pack did, but I couldn’t. They started whining soon, and their stomachs became bloated, and then they all died. Mother too. And I ran. When I reached the desert, I still ran. When I reached the ocean, I swam. And when I reached solid ground again, I ran.”

“But you’re not running now,” said the blue poison-arrow frog.

“No.”

The wolf stared at the tiny creature, enchanted by the smell of power and death he extruded.

“Yeah… I have to go,” said the frog, and he hopped off into the direction of the croaking that had just started up.

The wolf threw his head back and howled.

But the damp, thick forest blanketed the sound and only a whimper was heard.

“Girls, I need to tell you something.” Heather interrupted her daughters’ play. Upon hearing the serious tone of their mother’s voice, they dropped their blocks and sat on either side of her on the sofa.

“Where does water come from?” Heather asked.

“From the tap!”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about. The water from the tap comes from a big dam. The dam gets filled in from water from different rivers. The rivers get their water from underneath the earth. The water underneath the earth is from rain that seeps down.”

They stared at her with their big child-doe eyes.

“Can you remember the last time it rained?”

The girls looked at each other. Then they shook their heads.

“It’s not raining right now. There is still water in the dam, but not a lot. And the farmers, who grow all our food, their dams have dried up already.”

“Are we going to run out of water, Mommy?”

“Maybe. But we’re going to try our best to not waste water so that we can prevent that from happening. You’re going to help me, aren’t you?”

And so the girls stopped leaving the tap open while they brushed their teeth, and they collected their old bathwater for the plants outside.

A few weeks later, it rained.

It not only rained, it stormed.

It not only stormed, it hailed. Big chunks of ice, thrown down unto the parched ground.

After the storm, the girls grabbed two buckets and started collecting the ice.

“What are you doing?” Heather asked them.

“We’re collecting the ice. The ice will melt into water. And then we can send the water to the farmers!”

With slow, deliberate strokes he follows the lines in my face with his fingers.

“You are so beautiful,” he says. I look down.

“Listen to me.” He pulls my face up to look at him. “You are beautiful.”

“Even with the wrinkles?”

“I love your wrinkles.” He leans forwards and kisses my forehead, the corners of my eyes and mouth. “Wisdom lines.”

I push him away. “I’m too young to be wise and too ugly to be pretty.”

His shoulders slump. “I wish, just once, you would just say ‘thanks’ when I tell you how I feel about you. I can’t get enough of looking at you.”

“But with girls like Olivia Wilde and Scarlet Johansson in the world, how can I believe you when you say I’m pretty? I have pimply, wrinkled skin. Cellulite. Drooping boobs-“

“Yes. But you are real.”

“Real?” I push my hair behind my ears.

“Real.” He steps closer and frames my face with his hands. “Like the Velveteen Rabbit whose fur has been loved off, and who is loose in the joints, but the Rabbit doesn’t care because it has been worth it. You are no plastic facsimile of a stereotype person. You live and breathe and bleed and feel. You laugh with your whole body. You smile with your whole face. And if time and tide has taken its toll and the smiles freeze into your skin, I love each little wrinkle all the more for it.”

He traces his thumb from my nose down to the corner of my mouth. “I should write a sonnet about this line. And publish it anonymously or as a lost John Keats poem. Maybe then you will believe me.”