And She Lay Between The Leaves

This is my first story I've put up. Please read it and let me know what you think, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks

And She Lay Between The Leaves

Susan was seven. A slender little thing, with a spray of beige freckles coloring the ivory skin of her cheeks. She'd a ready, gap toothed smile, and hazel brown eyes flecked with gold that warmed when she did so. Everyone noted her early beauty, and often exclaimed to her parents how blessed they were, however they hardly seemed to notice these days. Most mornings were a post drunken stupor to them until noon, and then some more 'light' drinking throughout the evening into the night, until they fell into a self induced coma till late the next day. They would wake and not remember a thing of how intoxicated they had indeed been, simply gaped at the litter of empty bottles standing to attention by their bed.

           Days like this passed in an uneventfully quiet routine. Worse to startled Susan were the long, dreaded days in between, when the alcoholic flow let up enough for the marital pair to remember how much they despised each other. Days such as these dragged terribly, and were punctuated regularly by short yet fiery scraps. So as you can probably believe, these people did not have the presence of mind nor the inclination to be true primary care givers for their only child. In fact they hardly registered her existence. They had the good sense to provide three meals a day, and made sure she got to school, but that was as far as it went for parental guidance when it came to sweet Susan.

           She simply did not care. Her mind was still innocent and held a beautifully childish imagination, and so Susan as a young girl was quite content to walk her own private dream world, and came to her deadbeat parents only when she required feeding. The hardest days to bare were the sober days that ended in shattered plates and slammed doors. On occasions such as these, she decided that staying cooped up in the house was no fun, and so ran from their small country abode to the fringe of tall trees that fringed the vast field beside them.

        Then she saw it. The perfect place for her own private camp, where shouting and acting odd like her parents was strictly forbidden. Where the trees grew less sparse, and the leaves were thick, bushy and soft against her delicate young skin. Susan scaled the tree with ease using the handy foot holes and branches that spanned the entire left side of the magnificent wood. Midway up, she stopped to soak up a sight simply magical to her inexperienced eyes. A small alcove left a hole in the foliage, plenty big enough for her small body to wriggle into. She gazed around her in absolute wonder. Sunlight filtered through the paper thin green leaves, casting a beautiful watery honey pattern across her branch and upheld hands. She studied them intently, then was mesmerised by counting the rings in the bark of a next door branch. Some one had once told her this held the answer to the secret of the tree's age. According to Susan, her tree was ancient. And so she nestled in among her new habitat and smiled, content for now, and she lay between the leaves. Smiling. 

         Nine years craweled by, and a stunning Susan found herself sliping through the trees with the agility of someone who had done so countless times before. She had found herself running away to her secret haven between the leaves yet again, and although she had sworn to herself she would stop, she just couldn't seem to let go of her childhood safe house. Now it had become her young adult safe house too.

         She often lay there for hours, just keeping her own company and allowing time to slip around her unnoticed. On baking summer days she would soak the buttery yellow sun into her porccelain skin. The kind of sun that warmed you from the inside, and helped her feel ok again. Suzan occassionaly hurried back to her place between the leaves after dusk, with the sweet excitment of a child, to lay on the branch and gaze at the stars against the sky, that peaked through the greenery like precious pearls out of an ink black jewelry box. She treasured moments like these. They were all she had left now. Groaning inwardly she pulled her self up and climbed heavily down the tree, back to hell.

Home life had gradually gotten even scarier, worsening steadily through her 16 short years. The drinking had increased and had brought on disturbing behavior that frightened Susan more than anything. She was truly frightened of them.

           School was bearable. Not brilliant, but bearable. The girls envied her intence beauty, and the males were drawn by some gravitaional pull to her side, yet she never let anyone stray too close. She didn't want to risk any tight proximity with someone. She simply could not trust enough. Thus she grew increasingly lonely, but that was alright. She had her place between the leaves.

            Susan felt different, a woman with a purpose. Although only 17, anyone who looked through the window into her mind and peered inside, would agree that she had an understanding nature that was too vast for her years. She was a watcher of things. Some would say a wall flower. She would sit in a busy room and stay still as marble, listening and obseving the world around her and the people in it. She did this unconciously, and had gathered a bank of knowledge, on the behavioral patterens of people who walked through her life, that ran deep. She hated it. She hated knowing all the bad in people that they thought they could get away with unnoticed. Susan always noticed.

          She walked calmly, careful to place her flimsy, soaked shoes one in front of the other with an unrushed lilt. She walked to her place between the leaves. She needed to be there just now.

           Suzan looked fondly up at her true home between the leaves, and slowly set about climbing and shimmying her way into the tight tunnel created by the greenery. She had chosen that time of year, simply because she felt it stunning. It was cold, not freezing, but a brisk coolness that cleared her head and made her breath dance around her face and away through the leaves like fairies. She had once believed in them. The watery lemon sunlight streaming through the leaves, causing their green skin to glow, splashed across her slender hands and illuminated her bent figure.

             The world surrounding her awed her into complete silence. There was nothing she could possibly say to equal the magnitude of that moment. The sight humbled her. She could not think of a more appropriate place to do this. Nowhere meant more to Susan. 

          She did not pray as many would have, being that she had never felt particularly indebted to religion for any part of her life. She constantly questioned as to the idea of God. So she went about the task at hand quietly and calmly, tying the end to her branch.

           Susan stood on the edge, mentally and physically. She fought the urge to look down, where the ground seemed to spiral very far below her. She took many deep breaths, her chest rising and falling in time to the wind that rustled against her body. She watched her misty breath and felt the honey sun and smelt the earthy leaves. Then she stepped.

            Susan swung gently. A beautiful girl, lost to this world. She laid once again, this last time vertically, between the leaves.