𝙸𝙽 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙴𝙽𝙳 || Original Story

three | warm

She was beautiful. Radiant. Glowing like the warm summer sun.

Her hair was as brown as the autumn leaves, tinged with the colour of sweet, sweet honey.

Faint freckles splattered her skin like flicks of paint, messy and unique.

Her dress, patterned with yellow daises, flowed to her knees and was paired with an apron. She looked like a spring meadow and I'd never seen anything so magnificent.

I stared longer than I wanted to, unable to take my eyes from her. She smiled so warmly that it didn't matter if the sun was out; her sweet smile would be enough.

My cheeks burned up as if to be catching fire. I stared too long and became embarrassed.

I left without even smiling back and returned to my new home after strolling around the square, hoping that one day I'd have the courage to speak with her and hear what I knew would be something so angelic and soft that heaven would no longer be a thing of speculation, but a thing of my reality.

• • • • • • • • • •

Old Farm had apparently belonged to a farmer, his wife, and three children before it was mine.

The wife had died of cancer at a relatively young age, leaving her family behind in the large cottage. The two eldest children soon moved away- one to go to university in some city abroad and one to open up their own business down south.

The youngest child stayed with their father, tending to the house and its garden. However, the time came when the youngest decided to move away, too, but promised to come back to visit their father in the near future.

Meanwhile, the father was said to have secluded himself in the house, not leaving to go to the market every first Sunday of the month like he typically did, nor did he leave to go to the shop.

He simply died, died of heartbreak.

It first occurred when his wife passed, but his heart cracked that bit more over the years- the wear and tear of time that plagues the heart- and once his youngest child had flown the nest, he couldn't cope.

Local folklore says that his ghost haunts the house, wailing his losses and woes. That's why nobody bought the house and that's why it lay empty for ten years.

I, of course, don't believe in the spiritual side of the story. But I can understand the farmer's solitude.

The state of loneliness is liminal. And one would say that I was foolish to move to such a remote place where it was hard to find somebody who didn't know everybody else. But that's the beauty of it.

Small village means tight knit community, not seclusion. It's time for a change. And Maplebrook was the place to find it and embrace it. I needed this chance to slot in somewhere where nobody knew me, where nobody had heard of me, where the most exciting thing they knew about me was that I was from London.

But images of the woman from the florists was clouding my mind. I couldn't think about fitting in until I made friends. Could we be friends? She seemed so lovely, so caring. Not at all nervous. Unlike myself, of course, who was an utter train-wreck of anxiety.

Perhaps that'd be my barrier. Perturbation and self-deprecation.

My brother always said 'you never know until you try' as a form of encouragement. And for once in my life I knew it'd be wise to listen to him.

But not just yet.

Soon.