Flower Rain

She sat with her friend under the blooming apple tree, cradled by satin pink blossoms and smooth apple flesh. The two girls were perched on a looming branch, their backs leaning against the rough bark. Their pale hands each held a bitten piece of fruit from the tree, their soft fingers hugging the sticky crimson globes.1

The girl with the curling brown hair leaned towards the one with the pale yellow locks and whispered softly in her ear, her breath tangibly perfumed with the smell of pink flowers and light sunshine.2

“You’re my life.”Her sweet apple breath kissed the other girls white cheek and smoothed away her corn yellow hair. “Only you keep me from slipping away.”3

The blonde girl giggled; a pretty sound that danced its way through the whistling silence. “I do?” She let her elegant hand drown in her silky hair and reappear again at the middle, where she rippled it boastingly. Her icy blue eyes stared into her friend’s chocolate ones. “How so?”4

The other girl curled her hair around a caramel finger. Her eyes flew down to stare at the swimming grass below shyly. “You are my only friend. Only one who accepts me.” 5

She lifted up a thin hand covered by long black sleeve and smoothed away a fallen strand of hair. Her friend frowned suddenly, and took hold of the hand mid- swipe. She pulled down the sleeve and stared at the scarred, tan skin of the girl. “You cut again.”6

The girl looked ashamed. “My parents … were arguing about Tristan again.” She blinked back fiery tears for her older brother as she searched for a way to explain. “H-he might die soon.” Her friend let go of the skinny arm mapped in jagged routes of dried blood and healing slashes. She hugged the silent girl. “He’ll be fine. I promise.” She looked out from the pink and purple dots of dancing flowers. “Come. Let me show you something.” 7

She nimbly hopped down from their hidden perch and smiled up at her friend. Then she briskly walked off across the meadow, her bare feet stepping lightly on the shimmering green stained with the pink and red corpses of drying apple blossoms. The other girl skidded clumsily off the branch and landed quietly on her naked feet and calloused hands. Her hair enveloped her face in a cloud of dark brown waves. She looked around, her brown eyes reflecting the trees littered on the magical prairie, colored branches swinging in the light air. 8

She got up. “Cara!” Her voice rang out in the heavy silence. She caught a glimpse of flying blond hair and a shimmering blouse, almost invisible amid the swirls of floral rain. She ran. Her feet glided in abstract circles as she jogged around tall trees and shielded her eyes from the falling flowers. The wind tickled her neck, kissed the clumsy scars where she blindly cut with her silver knife during her bouts of silent sadness. 9

“Cara! Wait for me!” Her friend stopped. Her face spread wide in a smile as she turned around to look at the running girl.10

“Almost there, Tracee. Hold my hand.” She offered a white hand to the panting girl. Tracee took it and breathed in a breath filled with sweet apples and flying flowers. Her heart felt free, the only thing inside of her grieving body, the size of the moon; pure and royal. 11

She smiled at Cara as they walked. Cara was the only one who healed that heart. The shattered, glass pieces as from a broken mirror; unlucky and forgotten. She had kissed that heart and let it live. 12

They continued walking in a synchronized path, their silent feet padding on the grass together as a series of connected chords in a quiet symphony. Cara led her to the end of the prairie, where the green cut off into orange and red damp leaves and rotten moss under the shadowed canopies of a dark forest. A bare, dying tree stood right before the forest; its long grey branches spreading eerie shadows on the suddenly dull grass. Tracee lined her eyes over the piles of rubbish spread round the gnarled roots of the old tree and then inquisitively looked at Cara. Her friend pointed.13

“It isn’t just rubbish.” She seemed to read Tracee’s mind. “Look closely.” Tracee looked.14

Seeds upon seeds lay littered like tiny black ants next to the curled skins of rotting apples. Dried flowers; brown and fragile, like a butterfly’s wing, fluttered helplessly like tired moths. Broken pieces of a tree once beautiful, like Tracee’s heart. Cara bent down and picked up the glittering corpse of an orange butterfly. And then she pointed at the branches.15

Bottle upon bottle was tied by slender throat to every branch; each bottle only an inch apart from the other. They swung slowly like clothing out to dry, the glass glittering with every peeking ray of light, making soft ticking sounds as they hit each other. 16

Each bottle was filled with something. One was filled with the shimmering bodies of delicate butterflies, another with surgical scissors and a headless doll. A photograph with smiling women was folded in a dancing bottle. As the bottle swung near, she saw that every woman’s face was neatly crossed out in different colored sharpies, except for one. The sharpies lay in a neat bundle by the yellowed photograph. They were all memories. Forgotten pasts. Someone had come to share their pain and memories with the old dying tree by giving it something. 17

The bottles clinked together as Tracee stared at the tree long and hard; until her eyes grew numb and the tears started to slowly fall. Cara silently blew on the butterfly in her hands, and they both watched as it fluttered like a leaf down to the darkened ground.18

***19

The next day, Cara wasn’t at the meadow. 20

And the day after that.21

And the day after that.22

Tracee came every day to the shimmering meadow, blinked against the everlasting rainfall of soft blossoms, and sat in their perch. She left every day when Cara didn’t arrive after many hours.23

She didn’t know where Cara lived. She didn’t have a number to call her. So she waited. She dreamed and dreamed of a sky filled with real rain and not flowers. She hadn’t been home in a while. She forgot what home was. 24

Nobody wanted her. Her family worried about her dying brother, and she had no friends. So she created Cara to talk to. She only wanted a friend. 25

But imagination dies. And Cara died with it. 26

***27

Tracee sat alone in the tree for the forty seventh day without Cara. She had gone to the tree each day. The bottles were filled with her memories. She remembered the photograph with the smiling women; her mother’s old friends. She remembered how her mother lost each one after her illnesses, and she had crossed each one out with her markers to help her mother. The scissors and doll were for her sister who hated her. The day after she cut the dolls head off, her sister had died in an accident. Tracee had started to cut her skin after that. 28

She filled the last bottle with a piece of her hair that she cut off with the surgical scissors. It was wrapped around a soft flower that had blown into her hand as she opened a new bottle that had been empty on the tree. 29

She smiled at the trees. Maybe she should be getting home. They had nursed her for far too long. She smoothed a hand down the bark of the tree she always sat on with Cara, and then without her pale friend. 30

“Tracee.” She looked around as she searched for the voice. It came from nobody. The trees were beckoning to her with their shimmering branches but she closed her eyes.31

She lay down on the grass, the soft dancing stalks that pillowed her head and blanketed her slender fingers and bare feet. 32

“Tracee.” The voice sounded from far away and she couldn’t catch it.33

“Tracee, wake up.” 34

She shook her head and just kept her eyes closed, sighing under the flowers that were quickly falling on her body. In a moment, she was covered in pink and purple dots, like an abstract painting. Her breathing started to slow, and her head was filled with foggy memories.35

***36

She opened her eyes. Surrounding her were the whitewashed walls of a silent hospital room. 37

She shifted. The crisp white covers spread over her tired body moved with her. She eyed the silent paintings of mountains and rivers and the thin designs on the top of the walls. There was a button beside her, connected to wires by the IV stuck to her hand. For the sake of company, she pressed it.38

She was suddenly enveloped in warm bodies and different colors, tangy perfumes that were so much different from the sweet smell of apples and lonely peace. Different hands held her emotionless face; old and wrinkled like a satin dress, young and firm like the trees she slept in. A pale face that resembled her mother’s drifted in and out of focus as she gushed tears on the bed and Tracee’s wrinkled gown. 39

"Tracee!"40

"Oh, thank God."41

Her father’s dark face smiled at her as he held her hand. A boy leaned down and kissed her forehead. She eyed him cautiously.42

“Tristan.” They stopped their fluttering and touching as her thin voice echoed round the room. The boy smiled at her.43

“Tracee.”44

“You aren’t dead?” He laughed a beautiful laugh; full of life.45

“Not even close. You?”46

She smiled. Cara had kept her promise. Her brother was alright.47

She let her family hug her again and cry over her face and hair and chest. She held Tristan’s firm hand. She tried to remember her land of peace and loneliness, where Cara had come to her one day and left another. 48

But all she remembered, was a broken butterfly, fluttering softly to the dancing earth.49