Ozwald

Chapter 1

1

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. –Henrik Isben

A slowly streaming river of pale blue liquid ice churned under the cover of a large pile of fallen tree limbs in green and gold. The river was the border to a small forest, a grove of trees in glittering emerald. Each leaf reflected the brightest white light from the sun, it shone with the glory of the clouds at dawn, and each leaf glittered from the dew drops with which it was laden. It was a beautiful forest, with brown and green. Other colors seldom dared enter the forest of green and brown. Though there were only two main colors, it was rainbow at heart and those colors together made silver and gold look dull. As a small child, I always appreciated the forest, I used to look down on it and wonder about what fairies must live in it and the magical creatures that probably infected the stream. But now, perched on the crest of the hill by it’s side, I was appreciating it less and less by the moment. Starting the moment I hit any sort of puberty I slowly abandoned the idea that the whole world could be just one big, creative place with even a different kind of magic than the obvious kind, I didn’t appreciate it’s beauty in any form eventually. I began taking less time to smell the roses and more time to moon over boys way out of my league. Like Taylor Lautner and Orlando Bloom. (As a side note, though, I would like to smell Orlando Bloom. And I’m not trying to sound especially creepy, but to get that close to him would be wonderful. And his last name is Bloom. So I could be taking time to smell some extremely gorgeous and sexy flower.)

The time of day was too early to be certain, before noon, a time when I would certainly be sleeping on any other day of a normal weekend. But today was Anne’s wedding. Anne, my mom’s cousin’s friend-from-work’s sister in law’s daughter, who up until now was in absolutely no relation to me, until a chance meeting at a party. Now, I would think of her as Anne, my sister in law, rather than Anne, my mom’s cousin’s friend-from-work’s sister in law’s cousin, or in other words Anne that random person who has been hopelessly flirting and stalking my poor brother Will for the last week or so. (keep reading for a semi-romantic short story) After that Christmas party, Will had talked her into one smoothie, which led to another and another and another, and eventually became Will grounded for being caught in my parents’s bed with her on some random Saturday evening when my parents decided to take me and Claudia, my little sister, to see some new kiddie flick at the theatre. But legally they couldn’t ground him for that long, saying as graduation was only one week later and his eighteenth birthday four days after that. And so he took her out to that smoothie place where they went out on their first date for his birthday (or so I’ve been told) and then he sat her down and bought her a smoothie (I’m pretty sure that’s what you do at smoothie places) and proposed, or so I assume, saying as they came home later that night, shared their mutual agreement to be wed, and immediately trucked off to Wills room to try out the new king bed he’d bought himself from a garage sale. It’s legal for them to be married, because the legal age is eighteen and Anne’s older than Will so it works. Not that I’m particularly pleased about that, Anne’s rather annoying. 

I watched from the front row of folding chairs during their outdoor wedding ceremony on the hill at my dead grand uncle’s house as they said the vows, and Will bowed Anne in a way that made you just want to lean in closer, and then he kissed her. So they cut the cake, and threw it in each other’s faces, and I got a slice right away. It was delicious, mom helped make the frosting. She doesn’t bake much. But over all, it was a disappointing wedding, despite it’s perks. Anne and Will had decided, with my parents’s permission, that they would be living in Will’s room and getting summer jobs so they could afford to buy their own place someday while they both attend college in the fall. So basically, I don’t really like Anne, and she’s going to be living with me for the next couple of years, potentially. Will? I would prefer for him to stay a while, I don’t know. Mixed feelings? But it’s still all really weird.