Highlights on the Wild Berries

It always seems like sweet honey is lightly intertwining one’s eyelashes when they finally wake up from a long, long slumber. It stretches lazily into golden strands as we blink our eyes, attempting to have them open fully. One, two, three slow movements of heavy eyelids is usually what it takes, on average. And then, like an oyster with a pearl inside, they slowly open to greet morning.  

           I see golden rays of the sun streaming inside the den. Birds sing their regular song outside, but I notice a few new voices, high pitched and slightly hurried- I wonder if new babies were born during the winter.

           I lazily turn over, stretching my limbs and savoring the brief slowness of time, the light, and the wonderful feeling in my toes as they strive to reach the opposite wall.

           I hear a rustling and turn to see Mother slowly moving about. Her brown eyes light up when she sees that I’m awake.

           “Finally- you slept long this year.”

           “It was perfect.” I giggle and plop myself closer to her. I see that she has brought back mushrooms and berries for us to eat. The wild berries are my favorite. Mother and Father taught me to find the best ones- tartness sealed under a delicate skin that I could break gently with my teeth- a true delicacy.

           The berries are wet- maybe from morning dew, or perhaps Mother dipped them into the brook nearby. They catch the sun rays on their curved surface, and a circular white highlight blinks at me from each of the berries, the color turning into a rich magenta as it got further from the spot where the sun decided to rest.

           I scoop up a handful, cradling the berries in the palm of my paws, and chew happily. Mother rolls her eyes. “There’s barely enough of those- you’re going to have to go get more.”

           “Alright, I’ll do my best!” Licking juice from around my face, I lumbered over to the entrance of our den. I rock side to side a bit, settling into my limbs again after not using them for so long. But for once, I don’t feel lazy- if there’s any time I love to go outside, it’s during the dawn of spring.

           Meanwhile on a highway several miles up the brook…

           Lily was never good at driving. The fact that she passed her road test was something she considered a miracle of sorts. She could never get into the swing of it- that “getting used to it” feeling never seemed to settle like everyone said it would. The car still increased her heart rate every time, and that’s not even considering the nightmarish situation of a bus turning into the lane next to her, or trying to parallel park.

           But today especially. Her hands were sweaty and she kept having to wipe them off on her shirt before placing them back on the wheel, where they shook so much she was afraid that people would notice her little light blue Honda wiggling down the freeway.

           Lily looked up at her own pacing eyes in the rearview mirror, where a charm hung, embroidered with the words Ellenbury Law School .

           Lily Morley was the child that every mother secretly hoped for right when they saw the confirming lines show up on their pregnancy test, spurring them into wild dreams about how their kid may turn out. And after that initial thought, and after the nine months of morning sickness, bizarre cravings and nature’s best bodily torture, mothers believe in their hearts that they deserve a girl like Lily.

           A girl like Lily who brought home letters with cursive spelling out the words A pleasure to have in class and the sweetest girl in hands that were barely big enough to hold her lunchbox. A girl like Lily who only looked on quietly as she watched other kids her age have tantrums in the store aisle over the newest princess toy. A girl like Lily who didn’t need to be prompted to share her chalk and scooter on the playground, but rather gave away her possessions at alarming speeds to greedy kids that swarmed her like bees, and went on to climb across the monkey bars, heart hammering.

           From her sweetest girl years emerged her main school years. This time she brought home badges with Student of the Month and test papers with circled A Pluses above her neat lines of arithmetic. She’s a natural at science, incredible at math and history. She watched as her classmates that sat with her groaned as the teachers made a point to place their exams facing down on their desk as they gave them back. She watched her friends lift up the corners of the papers nervously, and letting out disappointed breaths as they saw the red marks.

           “Shit Lily, how do you even do that?” They huffed while Lily put hers into a folder.

           “I don’t know” She answered truthfully.

           Highschool and undergrad was the time when parents really began their worries, prowling and lingering at their kids doors to try and determine who was with the bad crowd. Mr. and Mrs. Morley did no such thing- Lily was the last person you’d discover at a party with a drink of jungle juice in her hand.

           And so when it came time for college, it was a surprise to no one that Lily showed up to school with a t-shirt confirming her spot in law school.

           What was a surprise was when on a warm day in March Lily’s roommate that she never really got along with woke up to all of her possessions being gone. The desk that Lily brought with her that usually covered their small window just left an outline where dust hasn’t gotten to settle yet, and pink cherry trees that had just begun to bloom pressed up against the dingy glass. A note said she was leaving, but no one knew where or why.

            Lily turned off the highway, sighing with relief when there weren’t huge cars with drivers not afraid to give the middle finger surrounding her anymore. She drove there for a while.

           Living in the city had made her forget what the outside world looked like. As her Honda puffed down the narrow road, the trees grew higher, their leaves poking out and uncurling, finally able to stretch after a long winter. Buds that would grow to be grass, dandelions, clovers, and those small yellow flowers no one knew the name of were sprinkled along the sides of the road. Everything looked lighter, more peaceful.

           Finally she arrived where she was looking to go. A small cottage was planted on a hill, wooden walls and a light green door partially climbed by curling vines. A thick wall of mostly evergreen trees and bushes surrounded it like a hug, emerging foliage of lime, emerald and sage overlapping and masking how far the forest went.

           It was the finest pick Lily could find when she opened her laptop 7 hours prior, closed her tabs about criminal law, and typed in “nature Airbnb” with tears in her eyes.

           She got out of the car, which she parked diagonally across the gravel.

           It was perfect.

Meanwhile beyond the foliage

           My favorite part about venturing out on the first day of spring was taking in all my surroundings. Rabbits twitched their noses at me when they heard my paws squelch on the wet ground. Bluebirds chirped and cardinals puffed their chests, hopping across delicate tree branches that bounced lightly under them.

           I’ve seen this day since I’ve been a cub, and yet it never became any less magical. Nature was a seamstress ready to weave with its pastel threads again, or perhaps a singer who had thrown away her somber ballads in exchange for warmer melodies. My eyes squinted under the golden sun, but as my tummy rumbled, I kept my gaze focused to find more wild berries.

Beyond the foliage again

           In hindsight, someone should have seen the signs. Lily broke her awed gaze of the cottage and hurried to her trunk. Opening it revealed an array of paintbrushes, pencils, and canvases. She scooped as much as she could in her arms and began to set up an easel on the grass.

           Someone should have noticed that after Lily was finished with her homework, which was always boring and quick, she would pull out a pencil and a sketchbook. Perhaps someone with a keen eye saw the long-lashes eyes and curly clouds and big-eared animals that crawled along the margins of her notebooks. And someone should have noticed that whenever bloodthirsty adults asked the “genius” Lily Morley what she wanted to be when she grew up, the word “lawyer” had never sounded duller.

           She figured she’d find it fulfilling eventually- the idea of helping people, doing good. But after hours of poring over the fourth amendment and every court case there ever was in her gray jail cell of a dorm, Lily couldn’t think about anything about that awful place without tears springing to her eyes.

           She finally sat down at her chair in front of the canvas, breathing deeply.

           A rustle.

           She looked up, frightened, a paintbrush frozen in her hand. A creature had lumbered out from behind the wall of trees, and looked just about as surprised to see her as she did it.

           A bear.

           A human?

           Lily panicked for a second, images flying through her head of an impending attack. What a news headline I will be…

           But the bear only seemed interested in Lily for a split second. It turned its head and saw something that Lily hadn’t noticed yet- a bush of wild berries. It completely forgot about the human only feet away and began delicately picking at the bush.

           Lily’s heart stopped beating so fast as she watched the scene. Her hand started moving again, and strokes of acrylic began to coat the canvas.

           How beautiful the world is. She dotted the shades of green that engulfed her, spattered browns, darks, and shadows. For the berries, she pulled out a shade of magenta that would surely stand out against the green background of the landscape. She couldn’t help but notice what justice the sun was doing- it bounced off of the berries, leaving winking highlights that she lovingly marked in white.

           Just as Lily was mixing the browns and chestnuts for the bear’s fur, the bear stopped picking and the two made eye contact. Lily focused on the golden shadows in the bear’s eyes, which she wanted to remember to paint. The bear focused on her hand, wondering whether the human has any food.

           Just two souls that, one knowingly and one not quite, seemed to have both just awoken from a long, long sleep.