A Piece of Gold From My Diary

I've been reading my old diaries lately.  It's funny and sad how much things have changed and at the same time, how much I am the same.  This is a short story I found today and I liked it so much I thought I'd share it.

From June 9, 1992 (Seventeen years old)

        She sat down on her comfortable couch.  She could feel them outside, yearning to come in.  She could hear their sneaky little fingers at the windows, could feel their omniscient eyes searching through the glass.
        She sat back and sighed.
        Every night on this certain date, they came.  There wasn't a night on this date that they had missed.  They had been coming ever since she could remember.  And now they were here again.
        When she was younger, she used to be afraid.  She used to huddle in her mothers lap and cover her eyes.  She could still hear her mothers haunting voice as she sang the songs of the ward.  She could still smell her fathers magik powders as he sprinkled them around the hearth, she could still smell the spark that he lit the fires with.
        Suddenly, she was there again, a child in her mothers lap, clutching the soft cloth of her mothers dress and hiding her eyes in its darkness.  Her mother was holding her tight and such piercing melodies flowing from her soul in song.  The words, as always will be, were foreign and exotic.  The tune seemed to dance on the wind, touch every leaf with an unforgettable note and every ear with purity.
        Then her father, her strong and knowing father, was there.  Reaching a giant hand into his leather pouch and pulling out a fist, streaming with powders of unknown colors.  The colors mixed, but never blended and their smells were of the most beauteous flowers under heaven.  And spices, the smell of spices from an enchantresses collection, all twisting the the air, the aromas fighting their clashing beauty.  A little there, a little here; her father would sprinkle.
        The essence of the powder seemed to dance and flow with her mothers songs and the little people outside, that came on this date, would become calm and intoxicated with her parents powers.  The gifts of voice and magik.
        And just as suddenly as those visions came to her, they were gone.  And she was all alone in her home in the woods with the little people fighting the locks and barriers to get in.
        Her parents were killed a long time ago.  They were on their way to a giant fair, seven cities away, when suddenly their horses went wild and their caravan over turned.  She was left sobbing in the mud, staring at the blank eyes of what had been her mother and father.  The horses, people of the town had said, had been possessed with demons and bewitched by powers they knew not what of.
        So she had grown up, thirsting for the magik that her parents never taught her, hungry for the power they had to control the little people.  Every night on this date, she sat here, bringing back the illusions but never quite having enough strength to make them real.
        And all the while they searched her small house for a tiny opening, a little flaw, that would let them in and make them real.
        She sat on her couch, not afraid but slightly worried.  She knew not their reason for their urge of entering, she could only wait.
        Then, a strange noise behind her and they were inside.  She sat still, her eyes squeezed shut, waiting.  They were all around her now, coming closer.  They started to caress her feet and smell her hair.  They searched her face, moved through her dress.  They were all about her, she longed to open her eyes but she could not.  She could still feel her mothers dress hiding her eyes from these little powers.  They felt her and searched her.  They breathed a breath that smelled of the magik powders that her father had long possessed.
        When they had returned the caravan to its right stand, she had searched for his bag but had never found it.  Her fathers bag and her mothers voice had been stolen from her for eternity.  A slow desperate tear escaped from her inner sadness and made its way down her cheek.
        The tear caused great excitement among the little people in the room.  They searched her face, took down her hair.  What were they looking for?
        Finally, like a breath of life to a dying soul, a faint distant sound of a trumpet blew.  The melody was of her mothers song and she gasped, her ears straining to catch it.  The little people stopped.  The sound of the trumpet grew louder and the tune etched itself deep into her memory and she knew it.
        The little people backed away.  She heard a faint, low whisper, "There is no magik here."  Then they were gone.
        She slowly opened her eyes.  The house was different.  It was a small, two-room house in the middle of the woods but now it seemed large and powerful.
        All of a sudden she gasped.  Her mothers song!  From the trumpet!  All the words, the strange erotic verses, came to her.  The tune from the trumpet swelled up from her throat and she sang.  Her voice, so much like her mothers, was the same haunting voice that pierced through those windy nights of long ago.
        And then she stopped, her heart pounding beyond belief, for there on the table was the exact same pouch that had belonged to her father!
        She took it up with shaking hands and opened it.  The same aromatic scents came rising from its insides and the powder, with all its magik colors, was there.
        Her heart felt new and full of strength and then she heard the same faint, low whisper.
        "There is magik here."
                                                                          The End.

Some Pictures of Early Spring

 Apricot Blossoms

 Rare Pear blossoms

 The cemetery in Piedmont.....magical place, serenity for

eternity.....