A story is better than complaints. I'm not doing so well, whether I'm paying the price for 2 weeks of constant typing, or the temps going back and forth between just above to just below freezing, or something else entirely, I don't know. It makes for boring whiny blogging, so instead I'll give you a story made for my WA group.
“Everything has a scent,
boy. It’s own unique trail in the air. Not, perhaps, noticeable to everyone,
but there all the same. Do you understand what I’m telling you, son?” The young
seed potato was silent for a while, deep in thought and concentration. “Maybe,
I don’t know… how can things like snow have a scent? Nobody can smell snow, can
they? Can you smell snow, Master Pimpernel?”
The elder seed potato looked
disappointed for the shortest span of time, before his expression again turned
blank, void of all emotions. “No.” He said, in a barely audible voice. “But even
if I cannot smell it, it doesn’t mean it is scentless, boy.” He suddenly looked
stern. “Not everything in this universe relates directly to you, Seddic. You
are less than a speck on the pages of history, barely a thought on a god’s
mind.”
Seddic felt oddly offended
by the old man’s words. He didn’t quite know how that could be; as he didn’t
understand half of what the elder conspesific vegetable spoke of. He shivered
from cold and tried to huddle closer to the other seed cousins and family
members above and below and around him on all sides. “But, I mean, how can it
have a scent if I can’t smell it? Besides, how can you know it has a
scent if you can’t smell it? Who told you it has one?”
The elder Pimpernel sighed.
He ignored most of what the youngster asked him – as he always did, as was
proper for an elder to do - “The snow has a scent. Sometimes it is a
scent that stings. Sometimes it stings all the way down to the lungs, depending
on how cold it is. Sometimes it is but a ghost lingering on the waves of ether,
a harbinger of things to come. Sometimes a human will stop what they’re doing,
look up, draw in a deep breath and utter: “I can smell snow in the air, a
blizzard is coming!” …and sometimes, when the snow is old, when spring has yet
to whisper her comings; when the sun’s rays have barely begun to offer from her
vast source of warmth, then the snow has a different kind of scent. One that
cannot be adequately described. One that is slightly wet, slightly old; still,
filled with wistfulness and the seeds of hope…” He fell silent for a long time,
then shrugged “Or, so I’ve been told.”His face crunched up as if suddenly
amused by some private bitter joke and spoke in a cracked voice “Who? Who told
you?” You ask, The elder cackled, “Well, son, the gods told me. That’s
who.”
He patted the confused
specimen of the younger generation Pimpernels on the back of his shoulders.
“I’ll tell you another thing, son. Something your immature mind will understand.
That time I told you about, the time when the snow smells of hope. It is now,
son.” He smiled as recognition dawned on the young face and lit it up. “Really?
Spring is almost here? Seddic asked? “We’ll be cut in half and planted in rich
black soil soon?” The elder returned the smile “Just so.”
And in his mind he hoped
this would be the last winter he’d spend here in storage. He had worked hard
for the position he now held and he’d been lucky, he was in the second layer of
seed potatoes and the chances of being left behind on the floor of the storage
bin again, was slim. He wondered briefly how many new potatoes he’d give new
life and nourishment to. His thoughts trailed off. Seddic didn’t interrupt or
disturb the elder further; instead he was left to ponder on much the same
things, although that was unbeknownst to them both.
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