Forget Me Not

Story about the dissapearance of life.

It was a sleepy town with only several rows of thatched roofs dotted the horizon - beauty marks on the bright blue skies. A simple stone well marked the center of village life, from which water seemed an inexhaustible supply, and depth a forever-reaching number. Children would dance around the well, hopping precariously about its edges, whilst their elders would shout smilingly for their safe return home.

            But one day there was one less child singing her heart’s song to the stony depths, one more curled in a ball at the foot of her bed. Her parents were murmuring frantically over her fevered body, wincing as it writhed to the beat of a coughing fit. The town physician was bent over her constantly, attempting to stop the shivering that threatened to split the china doll’s skin.

            The villagers had never seen such sickness, such frailty, and their hearts went out to the girl. Toddlers picked flowers, adults baked entrees, and elders knit blankets to wrap her freezing body. But shortly after the first quilt arrived at her doorstep in a frenzy of colored cloth, a wail rose through the roof and drifted as a cloud above the dampened town.

            On the door of her home hung a red handkerchief, ripped from its stitches rudely. Inside her family wept; outside people were frozen in a respectful silence. Children cried, cats meowed, and mothers sank to their knees in thanks for their luck. They had all lost, but only one family was permanently broken.

            But, though a wave of gray swept through the town, darkened the ever-blue skies, the children never stopped their song. The well was still enticing, a newly declared grave for pensive thoughts.

            She would not be the last. As the days grew shorter, more children began to leave the well to settle deep within the cocoon of covers and tears, graduating eventually to a sleep surrounded by cold, hard earth. The singing grew fainter everyday as more and more voices were lost, until, standing at the edge of town, the sound appeared to have vanished.

            A meeting was held among the elders who had yet to lose their children and the ones not yet consumed by grief. It was decided that the children must go; leave the town until it was safe once again, when the weather grew warm and the trees greened with the promise of life. It was better to suspend love than lose it completely.

            Knapsacks hung around their bent shoulders, the children were led out into the surrounding forest. Parents wept from a distance, afraid of a final embrace that they would not have strength to break. Slowly, trees obstructed the children and elders, until even the fleeting glances of movement disappeared. Weakly, clutching at each other’s hands for comfort, they turned their backs on their children and returned home.

            The days had reached their shortest, and even though tears still lingered, frozen upon brave faces, it began to grow warmer. Trees budded. The world turned green. The children did not return. The tears did not thaw.

            Worried and anxious, they decided to search the forest. They explored deeper into the mass of trees, desperate for the exiles of winter, ready for spring to begin. But fewer people came back each day, lost in the search for their loved ones, until there was no one left to return to the pale, sickly town.

            Spring folded into summer. The thatched roofs began to fray as unkempt vines entwined themselves in the ruins. The forest that had taken their children was slowly seizing the town, small trees sprouting from ground that once harbored lives.

            But stone does not crumble as easily as wood, and so the lone well survived; bottomless, hopeful, and forever ringing with the sound of children’s voices.

 

 

In the end it was not

They who died of illness

But disappeared for the

Fear intertwined with Love