White Fangs and Two Lonely Souls

A Story by M Slaughter

I believe this one should be up for interpretation, therefore: insert your own description here

You are like a flower in the cruel winter’s snow: I found you, and you were so beautiful. You made me laugh happily in my December depression, you made me smile in my dreary haze. Your smell reminded me of my past, memories of hot summer nights dancing alone. Memories of my first love, of my first touch. I carefully took you out of the ground, digging around your roots and carrying them carefully. You were kept inside with the unspoken promise of keeping this feeling within me. I cared for you intently, incessantly. I watered you and made your cold stem and leaves and petals comfortable with the heat of a bright light. Every day I would fondle your growing buds, I examined you. You were fascinating, and you were mine. I watched you every day, and the brisk February morning your buds finally loosened, releasing their flowering, blood red petals, I was delighted beyond words.

Then, one long day I travelled out for my nightly walk in the busy city’s park. And I had a horrible, horrific observation. Not that the world was full of hate, not that our days were limited, like you may expect, but I realized there wasn't any more snow on the ground. It was warm, it was beautiful. There were other flowers (none as pretty as you, but flowers!) growing outside. I knew you would be happier out there, with the warm sun shining on your green, sleek, growing body, but my selfishness kept you in my home. It forced you to stay on my bedside, under a sad fluorescent light, in a pitiful, dirty pot, day in and day out. Eventually, you wilted. You wilted and turned brown. I couldn't contemplate it. I was still watering you when you needed it, doing everything right. But you began to make me less happy, and your smell began to remind me of death. Rotting, stinking death and dying. I was depressed taking care of you, but you were still beautiful in your fragile, dried, drooping state. I wanted you to die right there so I could keep you forever. But I remembered when I saw this little flower for the first time. It was just a single, small, red bulb, poking out of the snow in the painfully brisk morning air. You had been helped by me at first, but now I was smothering you by keeping you from the world you belonged in. I knew what I had to do.

So, guiltily, reluctantly, I took you out of your pot. I took you out and I dug you a hole in the exact place I had found you that last winter. I put your fragile roots in the dirt gently, and I moistened them with my tears. I surrounded you with loosely-packed soil, and I left you alone. Alone to prosper by yourself, to be your own sole provider.

I didn't see you again until months and months later when I was walking on my own on another one of my regular strolls. I almost didn't recognize you in the dark black night. You were so large, magnificent; more spectacular than I had ever seen you before. Your warm stems and leaves and buds and blossoms were colorful and healthy and bright, even in the moonlit setting. I had never been so happy that I had let something I loved so much go. My beautiful flower in the comforting summer’s night.