Cycles: A Short Story

I was watching her peripherally while we sat beside each other on the river bank. The water was rushing quickly, pulling our feet to the left and rubbing our cuffed pant legs on the clay and mud that formed our earthy seats. She was scanning the water for fish and other aquatic creatures that could thrive in freshwater.


I adored her for the innocence that she held. No one understood her like I did. The only ones that did understand her, barring me, were Mother Nature's creations. The trees swayed toward her when she passed. Angry and scared strays of all shapes and sizes would nuzzle their snouts on her legs during our daily jaunts down the street. She could catch skittish woodland creatures with ease. Her best friend was a sugar glider that was originally scheduled to die because it got involved in a fight with another sugar glider and lost. It was missing most of its fingers and toes. I wanted to name it Stumpy. She named it Champ.


The best part is that her little nine-year-old heart wasn't being facetious or ill-mannered in the least. She truly thought that he was a champion. He survived, and that made him extraordinary in her gleeful, young eyes. Champ spent most of his latent days clamped onto her shoulder to see a slightly taller world than he was used to. His handicaps left him with limited gliding abilities, which just showed how amazing he really was when he didn't give up life. It was a firm belief of the little girl's that animals could have the same emotions as humans.


A rainbow trout glided between river grasses and weeds, coming to a halt at her toes. Her toes were waving in the current gracefully, like a willow tree undulating and tickling the wind with its long, leaf-lined fingertips. The trout watched her toes in a trance, its mouth opening and closing, a trait I have never understood.


"When it opens its mouth, water goes in, and when its closes its mouth, water passes through the gills and oxygen is picked up and sent into the blood." She reads my mind sometimes. Intuition is what our mother calls it. I think it’s a sensitive sense of perception. There might not be a difference there, but I think there is. Either way, it's likely that she could pass a high-school freshman biology class as a fourth-grader. The kid gets giddy at the thought of nature books and manuals.


She smiled and wiggled her toes a bit, actually bringing the fish closer. If she could ever bring herself to hurt another living organism, she would be one hell of a fisherman. The fish would flock to her and all she would have to do is sit in a boat and be a buoy. She giggled airily as the fish's fins tickled the bottoms of her feet, in turn bringing a smile to my face. There are no laugh lines etched into my face from an overabundance of happiness, but when she's around, I find it easier to feel simple joy. She's a reminder of the things that are decent in the world. Innocence isn't completely lost, and that gives me hope.


The breeze found its way across the freckles on her nose brought out by the summer sun, her auburn waves swaying as if her head was underwater instead of her feet. The elegance and grace for which models would kill was instilled the tiny body sitting to my left. The one that would rather build a fence around a dandelion to protect it from stomping shoes rather than pick it and let it die. The girl was already a vegetarian.


She made me seem like an ogre in comparison, with my meat-eating and weed-crushing ways. Most people paled in contrast to her, though, when standing beside such a tender spirit. It was sad to think that she could become a self-conscious, boy-crazy teen in the coming years. She had such an old soul with naïve eyes as windows of which to peek. A rarely-seen combination. One that resulted in wisdom and maturity. Age didn't matter at all.


The fish swam away, turning its body back once, as if to say a bittersweet goodbye. I picked a daisy that was growing in the grass beside me and placed it in her hair behind her ear. She frowned and pulled it out, twirling it by the stem between her fingers.


"Its life span was already short." She let it plop in the river, even managing to give poise to throwing flowers. "Now, something will eat it and it will turn into fuel."


"It's a cycle, babe. Everything has a cycle."


"Even love."


I looked ahead at the rippling water, eventually closing my eyes and feeling a brush of rough fingertips on my arms. A touch that lingered, lousy with memories. Or maybe it was just the wafting breeze.


I could smell something sweet and familiar. Or maybe it was the honeysuckle reaching around a tree nearby.


I could hear a whisper right against my ear. Or maybe it was the rustling of the leaves in the trees bending to be closer to my pint-sized companion. She was, after all, like the sun. She was warm and possessed a gravity that pulled creatures, both human and animal, towards her. A dragonfly marked in turquoise and bright blue skidded across the surface of the water and flew a ring around her head. The perfect halo for such a girl.


"You're right. Love has a cycle, just like life."


"It pulls you in."


"Just like you do."


"I don't pull. I let things come."


"That doesn't always work."


"It only does when it needs to." She reached out and caught a maple leaf that was flying through the air, handing it to me by the stem. I spun it between my fingers, imitating her with the daisy. I dropped it in the water as well and watched it as is floated away. "Only when it needs to."