Footprints

I have used all but a couple of the twenty-five words provided by The Sunday Whirl, Sunday Scribblings 2 and Sunday’s Whirligig. They are years, sentence, tell, safe, night, chill, try, join, hung, cherry, wearing, bloom, butter snow, next, springs, bough, trees, connect, deal, again, roam, woodlands, and seventy. 

I tried to tell her it wasn’t safe. It was late at night and there was a bitter chill in the air.  But she knew the fields and woodlands like the back of her hand. She had roamed them daily for most of her seventy years and once she made her mind up about something, there was no persuading her otherwise. I suggested I join her, but before I finished my sentence she said no, she needed to be alone. I fell asleep in my chair, something I never do. When I awoke, the sun was shining through the window. I was alone in the cottage.

I followed her footprints in the scattering of early spring snow, from our gate and into the trees beyond. I felt strangely calm. There amid the mighty oaks, stood a single cherry tree, festooned with pale pink blooms. As I approached it, her footprints ended. She was nowhere to be seen. Down from the bright blue sky floated a silk scarf, the one she was wearing the last time I saw her. It settled on a blossom-strewn bough.

I never saw her again.

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