My One-Shots During Midnight Hours

The Meadow

The most beautiful smile I ever saw, was on the boy in the meadow.

Silvery flakes drifted down, glittering in the bright light of the harvest moon. The blackbird swooped down, cawing at movement in the dark fields.

At the time, I hadn't known what that movement was. My first guess would've been a field mouse, had I been asked, which I wasn't, because it was two in the morning and it was snowing and I was insane.

But maybe me being so insane was worth it; maybe him being just as crazy was worth it to him. Maybe it hadn't mattered at the time, but when you're looking back on life and playing that horrid "What if?" game, every detail matters. The way the moon shown brightly on his chocolate brown hair. The way his silvery grey eyes reflected all of the passion his heart held. Even the way that blackbird caught my attention mattered.

But maybe the most important detail was the morning before.

You see, I had been playing that wonderful game of "What if?" and realized how simple my fate was. One wrong step on the cobblestone path and I could change my future. I knew I hadn't exactly done the best things in my past, but I was happy as it was. Or at least, I thought so at the time.

When I met him later that night, I knew it was different. I knew I could've done better. The way his eyes lit up; a way I'd never seen before. It was intriguing, marvelous, as he recounted as many tales as he could before slipping away at dawn. The day before I would've been too scared, too worried about my life to sneak out and watch the stars by myself. The boy wasn't scared; the boy knew I was terrified. The boy held me in his arms as I pointed out the constellations and plants and all of the things he'd never learned. The boy was too busy traveling, too busy moving around to truly sit and learn.

I, however, was the opposite. I was too intrigued with sitting and waiting and watching to move, to breathe in the air around me and take a good look at my life. The boy in the meadow and I weren't so different; but then again, we weren't so similar either.

That's why I went back the next night. The boy was there, but he wasn't as happy. His eyes didn't light up as I'd hoped. They gazed at me softly and I finally realized how important the meadow was to the boy. I hoped I wasn't intruding as I sat next to him gently, letting his vanilla scent wash over me. "I'm glad you're here." He whispered quietly.

It was my turn to hold the boy in the meadow.

~

The boy in the meadow came there every night with new adventures he had gone on, new stories to tell, new worlds for us to explore together. We sat and we huddled together in the cold of the night and we watched the stars and we laughed. The boy was smiling whenever he saw me. The boy knew how to make me smile.

But the bad part was, I was smiling less with the people outside of the meadow.

~

I saw the boy one day in the market. He was walking upright next to a man, a tall man with a brooding beard and striking blue eyes. The boy caught my apple green ones in his greys, and we held it as long as we could. My mother soon shooed me towards our car, but not before I noticed the lack of shoes on the boy's feet. Or the smack the man gave him as he watched me leave.

The drive home was quiet; I didn't want to talk anyways. My mother gave me looks, glares even, as I stared straight ahead in my own world. As soon as we entered the house, I received a stern lecture. I wish I had gotten the slap, and the boy in the market had gotten the speech.

I soon came to realize the boy in the meadow was as different to the boy in the market as the soft spring grasses of the fields were to the cold, hard fronds from the winter. Seasons soon changed, and the boy and I met more often. We never spoke of the market; we both knew we were different people in the market.