Chapter 4.3 - The Oak Tree

That night the full moon woke Claire up again. It was staring at her through the window, so large it looked unreal, as if placed there by an unseen hand, to summon her attention. 

She didn’t really want to get up, but something inside her pressed her to, it spoke to a side of her she didn’t know existed, or rather she knew, but didn’t want to acknowledge. Throughout her life it had been easier to ascribe whatever she felt but couldn’t explain to an overactive imagination and dismiss it. If she had never heard of anything like it before and it made her uncomfortable she decided it wasn’t supposed to exist. There are some who say that there is no such thing as an imagination, that all the things one sees inside one’s mind already exist somewhere in the nooks and crannies of reality, but she wasn’t one to dwell on this type of wisdom. Her instincts, on the other hand, which she had worked so hard to dull her entire life so that they wouldn’t interfere with her daily routine were sharpened and tightened like tension wire now, keen to pick up even the slightest input from her surroundings. 

She didn’t go to the mirrors, instead she made for the parlor doors and walked out onto the porch and into the night garden which looked polished like silver in the light of the moon.

Barefoot, she stepped into the soft grass and walked to her oak tree, careful not to step on the clumps of wet violets which had spread significantly since she had last seen them. With movements she knew by heart from her childhood she nestled herself in the hollow of the tree roots and their gnarly branches wrapped around her like the armrests of a chair. She sat there in silence, listening to every sound, noticing the slightest move, the shimmer of the moonlight on the blades of grass, the fleeting shadows passing over the heads of the cattails, the white of the gardenias piercing through their dark foliage. 

“This is crazy,” she thought. “I’m crazy, with the non-human nonsense, what reasonable person believes such things?” She wanted to continue her internal rant, but she suddenly felt very tired, like she hadn’t slept in weeks and every cell in her body was screaming for rest, so tired that she didn’t feel like returning to the house, but instead curled up in the nest of the roots with her long hair spread out on the ground between them. In the light of the moon her locks and the knotted limbs looked very much the same, like blood vessels branching towards each other to feed a common interstitial space. 

She woke up at some point during the night and couldn’t tell what time it was. The garden was still dark and the air felt a lot cooler. Strong winds must have blown while she was sleeping, because the oak tree had shed a thick layer of leaves on top of her body and formed a soft blanket that kept out the chill of the morning. She smiled, closed her eyes and went back to sleep, just as the first rays of sun started gilding the rugged bark above her head.

“Don’t tell me you slept outside again,” Grandmother woke her up, almost in time for breakfast. “If your grandfather sees you,” she shook her head, displeased, and then turned around to finish setting the table.

Claire was still disoriented, not ready to shake off her slumber, as her crooked frown indicated, but she stood up from the pile of leaves with grass and violets tangled in her hair and green stains on her night gown, trying the best she could to stretch her achy bones and muscles back into shape. It turns out that us pampered humans are no longer that well adjusted to our natural habitat.

“You look a fright,” Grandmother couldn’t help a giggle. “What on earth were you thinking? You can’t sleep out on the ground, you’ll catch your death!”

“What?” a still confused Claire tried to make sense of the conversation, which sounded dull and muffled inside her brain. She regained her wits and continued. “I’m sorry, maman, I guess I must have dozed off.”

Grandmother looked at her intently, but said nothing.

“Coffee?” she offered, eager to return her befuddled granddaughter to a rational state as soon as feasible, preferably before her grandfather saw her.

“Yes, please,” Claire downed the first cup of coffee in one gulp and ran inside the house to change for breakfast.