I: Erica
I like to walk in the forest behind our summer house. My father thinks it’s because of the blueberry bushes. It’s true that I come back from my walks with a basketful of juicy berries, that mother makes into pie or jelly. But I don’t walk in the forest because of the berries.
My mother thinks it’s because of the wildflowers. It’s true that I love nature, the beautiful aromas of the tall, august pines mixed in with the oaks and the maples. The wildflowers peek up through the thick blanket on the forest floor, and I will pick myself one or two and stick them in my hair. But I don’t walk in the forest because of the flowers.
I walk in the forest because of the man who lives there, by the pond. I see him everyday, chopping wood, his shirt laid across the woodpile behind his cottage. I watch his muscles become taut as he swings the ax, his tanned skin glistening with sweat. I imagine that I’m close enough to him to smell his aroma, a thick, musky scent, I’m sure, the scent of manliness.
The men who come to Mother and Father’s parties are nothing like him. They are puerile boors. But my Mystery Man is raw energy.
I like to watch him, my nipples growing stiff under my thin sundress as the cool breezes blow over me. I pick blueberries so that he won’t know that I’m watching him, while in my head fantasies play. I envision him taking me into his arms while we rock back and forth in a rowboat on his little pond. The water laps against his boat as he touches me in places that I’ve never been touched before, places that the boors at the country house would never think of touching me. His long hair brushes against my face as he leans over me to kiss me, and I moan.
Oh, this is too much! I ache to feel him, to touch him, to run my hands along that gorgeous, muscular chest, but it is all in vain. His sort are never attracted to the likes of me. And so I am fated to merely watch from afar, picking my blueberries as I sneak peaks at his firm body.
All the while, he is oblivious to me, I can tell.
II: Roman
I chop wood every day. It has not always been this way, and now my wood pile has grown large. It is July, for God’s sake, even in the dark of night it doesn’t drop below 50. So why do I feel so compelled to chop wood?
It has been this way for over a year now, ever since that first day that I saw the girl from the big house on the hill. She was picking berries in my forest; she did not see me, thank the gods. Had she seen me, I surely would have startled her. Girls like that do not take well to the likes of me; they prefer their boorish puerile men.
She was a vision of pure beauty. The sun shone down upon her, and glistened in her blond hair. Her skin was a beautiful pale white, like an innocent babe’s, but her sundress clung seductively to her curves, revealing a sensuous body.
I was chopping wood then. It was still spring, and the evening grew chilly. I chopped my wood, stinking of sweat, and I watched her from afar. She nonchalantly picked berries, and fantasies ran through my head.
I saw myself laying with her by the fireplace in her home. A fire raged within the fireplace, and the flames licked the brick that surrounded it. The fire consumed the wood, just as my fire consumed me. I took her in my arms and slowly undressed her, my long hair brushing against her face as I leaned over her to kiss her. She moaned softly beneath me as I touched her soft, supple skin.
Oh, this is too much! I ache to feel her, to touch her, to run my hands along those gorgeous, smooth curves, but it is all in vain. Her sort is never attracted to the likes of me. And so I am fated to merely watch from afar, chopping my wood as I sneak peaks at her firm body.
All the while, she is oblivious to me, I can tell.
III: The cardinal
The bird fluttered through the forest, hopping from branch to branch. It would stop occasionally to grab a grub here, a berry there, cocking its head curiously at every random noise.
The berries were especially good in this part of the forest, right near the edge of the field where the rich humans had built there house. One of the humans would come out now and then to pick through the berries, and this seemed to cause the berries to grow larger and juicier than the berries in the rest of the forest.
The cardinal pulled at a berry and mused idly about it. He hadn’t seen the lady out picking berries of late. This was odd. There was a time that she would come by every day, picking berries by the basketful. Now it had been two months since she’d been in the forest.
The cardinal flew over to the small cottage that had been built by the pond. It was quiet, a nice place to settle down for a while to nap. It used to be noisy here, when the human who lived within would come out and chop wood, for no obvious reason. There would be piles of wood, and still he would come out, every day, and chop more up. And then, suddenly, two months ago he had stopped.
How odd.
The cardinal cocked its head to one side. It was a cool day, late in August. Soon it would be time to linger south, to the warmer climates. Already, smoke was idling up from the chimney of the cottage.
The cardinal thought about the day that the woman had stopped picking blueberries. The cardinal thought about the day that the man had stopped chopping wood. The cardinal was there, and it was the same day.
The cardinal had been doing its usual rounds in that part of the forest. The lady was there, picking her blueberries, acting distracted. The man was there, chopping his wood, acting distracted.
The cardinal had fluttered to a tree in between them. It lit upon a branch, preening itself. It had landed a bit more noisily than it had intended to, and the sapling shook underneath its weight. That was what caused the lady to stop her distracted picking and look at the cardinal. That was what also caused the man to stop his distracted chopping and look at the cardinal.
And then they looked past the cardinal, at each other.
And that was all there was to it. For countless months, they had been that close to each other, and they had been oblivious to each other’s existence. They had been so distracted in their own fantastical visions to notice the other.
That had been two months ago.
The cardinal fluttered down and lit upon the open windowsill of the cottage. There was a bottle there, empty though it was, that smelled interesting. tT smelled of blueberries, but, on closer inspection, the blueberry juice it had once contained had grown fermented. The cardinal grew dizzy with the heady odor.
Inside, it noticed the humans which had been so busily distracted so long ago. They lay side by side, stripped of the idiotic costumes the humans normally wore.
She looked so soft there, he looked so strong, laying side by side by the fire, glasses of the fermented juice next to them on the ground. There were oblivious to the cardinal, just as they had been oblivious to each other. They were wrapped up in a world of their own.
The cardinal impishly hopped into the window, grabbed a blueberry from the bowl that sat on the table, and fluttered off into the forest again.
All was quiet once again.