Ever After by Anya Wylde

Author:Anya Wylde
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: funny, fairytale adventure, fairytale, fairytales for adults, romance, novella
Published: 2014-12-28T10:51:45.075470+00:00

(iii)

She sat frozen on the rocking chair, watching the garden through dull eyes framed by sharp, icy lashes for a long, long time.

She watched how colourful birds came and went as the seasons changed. She watched them build funny little nests and push their little chicks off branches until they learned to fly away. She noticed how slowly the grass grew taller and taller, and how lovingly buds unfurled into flowers as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky. She spotted little ants and water rats scuttling about and learned to distinguish between every frog that dwelled by the pond.

She kept watch for so long that she could tell the number of grooves in all the branches within her sight. And when she knew every vein on every leaf, every shade on every stone, and when she had learnt to predict a storm simply by the way the trees swayed or the animals quivered, she turned her attention away from the sights and focused on the sounds.

She listened at first with a detached air. She heard the crickets chattering, the rain pitter-pattering and the far off jabbering jays. She heard the thunder and the wind, the rustling leaves, and the rolling carriages and drays.

She spent hours listening to the world outside, learning to hear sounds that most humans would miss. She learned to differentiate between the sound of a butterfly wings and the sound of a falling feather, and if she tried really hard, she could even hear deep inside the earth where blind moles were busy digging tunnels, worms squirmed about to and fro and snakes were on a hunt.

And then one day, she heard him.

A man.

She could see his hazy reflection in the window. He was tall and dark and stood behind her rocking chair. She tried to see his features in the window pane, but they seemed to dance out of her sight.

He crept closer towards her, and his footsteps sounded softer than a fish skimming over water in some faraway land. She wanted to turn her head and look at him, but after so many years of being an ice statue, she could no longer move her stiff neck.

He stood patiently like an inanimate stone as if waiting for something. Perhaps he wanted her to look at him? Or did he want to stare out at her wonderful little garden and hear all the lovely sounds as well?

For the next few hours they remained like that—one sitting, one standing—both of them still like a placid lake; calm, serene and silent. He departed just before her husband came home. She wondered vaguely if he would return.

He did. He came every day, always patient, still and peaceful.

Gradually, she turned away from the world outside, her attention on him. Questions sprouted once more in her mind, and she wondered who he was and why he came, and every time he left with the setting sun, she wondered if he would return.

He always arrived when the sun’s rays hit the oak tree by the pond.

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