Lone lily and loving willow

In times forgotten by most, stands a hill by the sea. This hill stays by the water,  peering into the dark ocean blue. On the hill grows a sprout, barely a twig of a tree. Sunny days turn to starry nights, and the little twig grows strong.  A willow tree stands alone on a hill by the sea, hearing the whispers on the wind and the cries of the earth. As the willow stands tall and proud, others find of it’s calm existence.  Willow tree keeps the secrets shared by those that visit, but one visitor stayed much longer than most.

He was a young man, worried about his future and the one he loved. He would speak with a large vocabulary, telling small stories about what happened to him each day. From what he told the willow, he was a simple man looking to get someone extraordinary to notice his existence. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. A random day, roughly two months in which the young man had first found the grown willow, he didn’t show up. The next morning he walked up the hill, tears raining down to stain his cheeks.

“Willow tree, do you ever get lonely? Or bored of me?” he sniffles, taking a seat at the tree’s base.

“You probably do,” he sighed and put his face into his hands, bringing his knees up to his chest.

“You’re the only one that listens to me now,” he shook his head, still having his hands on his face. His hands now covered his eyes alone.

“Sometimes I wonder why I keep going back to town. Back to my ‘home’.” His voice dripped sarcasm when he said the simple word home.

“Nevermind, I’m just being silly. Talking to a tree, like always….” he sighed. “I need to stop being like this, so… Depressing.” With this final word the young man stopped talking for the rest of the day. He started up this talking again the next day, like usual.

One early afternoon he brought a small pot and a shining can of water. He dug at the willow’s base with his small hands, planting an even smaller plant. He poured out the water, and it glistened with the refracting the sun. He tended to the small plant, eventually giving the willow a friend. It was a little lily. After the flower had grown the man left for a good while, letting years pass. Forty years later, after the young man left and another, older man arrived with a small paper, along with a curvy purple container. To anyone that had heard the young man’s stories, would recognize him. For he was the main tellings of his stories, that one extraordinary person.

“Hello willow tree, little lily,” he smiled and poured out crystal clear water, onto the flower and grand tree, from the odd shaped container.

“Your old friend is, in a new light,” he forced out, sorrowfully.  “He did ask me to read you his last story.”

“Atop a hill, by the sea

A flower was illuminated with a steady haze

A quiet shadow to the large willow

Weeping away her leaves

For those that told her their wrongs

And left without any shame”