The Willow Girl

A Story by Ursa major

The Willow Girl:

I sit here waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting. For years this has been my life. Under the willow tree sitting here. I feel my fingers in the rich earthy soil. Knowing that what is beneath them is a world full of life and a whole other tree that we can't see a world of roots and bugs. Like a reflection on the water, but this reflection is invisible. Another world that is right below us secret and hidden. With the roots reflecting the delicate branches carrying all the sustenance that life needs.

Only the microorganisms living inside of it can see the turns and twists. They are the ones who can see the highway of life that is in those roots. They see themselves, but no one sees them when I look at the visible world around me. The Lilly pads floating on water, the reeds in the swampy trees. They sway with the tune of the symphony of nature. Nature speaks a song of sorrow and longing, beauty and desire, love and hate.

The beating of my heart is the drum, the birds are the violins, the wind is the cellos, frogs are the bass, all weeping a scared chime. The symphony of nature knows all the emotions of history. Nature holds the power over all things but Willows are the hidden beings with great power. The hearts of the earth. The conductors of all nature symphonies. But I didn't know that I would become a conductor.

Willows hold Things like secret objects. Things you forgot, left behind. Maybe a necklace, a charm, or a shoelace. Or maybe things that are hidden that no one sees like autumn leaves changing colors, ducklings swimming in the river, and lizards in a bush. The slim yet giant trunk carries all the burdens of nature or people. Little things are what this peaceful giant carries.

As I sit here, naive to it all. Questioning, why am I here not to love or be loved? My heart was singing the scared chime of life. I close my eyes waiting wondering if I will ever see someone ever again. As my mind and my subconscious take over. I dream, I dream if the fallout didn't happen If I wasn't sitting at the tree with my back to it. The long strands of branches and leaves hypnotic swaying to fill my head. If I could get transported into another life another existence. Everyone is the same in a world with no sorrow, death, or

destruction. Were life and nature perfectly symbiotic? Wondering Waiting. Waiting if when I wake I can see a world waiting for me. Wondering waiting.

When my eyes opened I don't know what I saw, wishing that there would be a civilization waiting for me to see and hear and talk to. When you are alone for too long you miss talking, interacting, and living. But there is nothing but nature, grass, flowers, trees, and streams. Like a baron landscape waiting for something to fill it.

But as I scan the scenery I see something in the shadows. I figure a boy. I could only see his face peeking out from the bush. I thought there wasn't anyone left. When the fallout happened, when did it happen, not knowing what day it is or time or even how long or old I am currently I couldn't recall what happened. I just remember terrible things, things that a person shouldn't see in their life. But bits and pieces started coming back. There was burning lots of burning, people screaming for their lives, some on their knees praying for their life. “ Oh please god help me, take me to a place of no suffering. Strip me from this burning.” It took me back, back. To that day. Like I was transported back in time.

I look down at something restraining me from going to the nature boy. There are vines, vines all over my body. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, I couldn't act, I was this corpse tied to a tree! Slowly they grow over my body. Increasing in length by the second. My skin felt them creep up. Twisting and turning until they are to my neck.

Then the trunk that was keeping me there behind my back started moving. First one little snap, and then it started cracking. The gaping hole got larger and larger until it was as big as me. As it opens the vine starts to pull me in. Then when the tree's insides are exposed, the vines yank my entire body into the tree that held all the hidden things. I reach out my hand desperately being the only thing visible outside of the willow.

I was going, going, gone. I could see light for only a minute. A slight beam of light left from the opening of the tree. And it closed, I was trapped. If it was the only sight of god I could see. Until I was surrounded in black where the light disappeared. When the tree was finally closed. hidden underground. I am down, under protection, and also trapped. As unknown time passes by the vines duplicate, the moss multiplies, bugs scatter on me and the hidden things collect around me. Years, and decades, pass by and my vines grow while my bones become weak.

Over time I learn to love the willow I have. But still yearning for the nature boy. I learn to care for the bugs and the very roots. I am the caretaker of the underground, I see the tree's reflection. learn to love the little hidden, things.

As my soul is just holding on, like a fermata of a note. Holding on for the fear of life. Now it’s only nature's turn to make the gesture to end it. End the song, end the life, and make a ceremony of the girl under the willow tree. Remember the short yet important life I had. Make the last measure end with a peaceful piano quiet, and unseen.

Memories flash before my closed eyes in quick seconds. Smells, people, and feelings. Love, hate, fear. Lavender, mountains, rivers. I remember what it is like to hold a loved one. To feel what it's like to be loved unconditionally. Then it's black, it's like echo's, hidden things, it like a shoelace, lavender, even symphony. Echo's will be sprinkled around everyone like fall leaves in wind. I will be haunting the small things My soul will linger in the fog, in depths. And I will haunt you...

Look at me for who I am now. Remember the person that once was. The girl who stood there longing, waiting. Remember the being who is beneath the willow tree, wrapped in vines! Remember me when you see little things, remember me when you see the firefly, remember me when you see the willow on the hill. Remember the willow girl

Soon I will become a statue dissolved, a hidden thing. I will soon become the earth. I am not dead, just not breathing. A lot of people call me different names, some call me the heartbeat of the earth, and others mother nature may be a conductor. But what they don't know is that I am the mother of all things hidden. I will be the places you look for, the treasures you find, I am all the small things hidden inside. Soon my breath, my life turned into fog. A blur of the person who once was. Soon I will be nothing more than word-of-mouth, echoing from the past. I will become hidden, I will become fog.