Wings 1

                    

    Love stories are like people. They have faces and personalities of their own. Never the same.

    The room was filled with warm autumn light that trickled like honey through wide windows, so the shadows developed nicely on a plaster head. Young Forest did not like the fact that she had to draw in the first day of school, when she would have rather savored the jolly atmosphere that marked the beginning of a new year of learning. Let alone to go through an exam while everybody else was at ease. But it was her wish to transfer to an art school, so she needed some work done. 

    Soon, the room became busy and noisy, as more people were entering and exiting, and Young Forest was having a hard time focusing on her task. A few stopped and sparked a conversation, assessing her work a little. It only made her task harder, but somehow she managed to finish her project, and was happy to be done with day's job. With all its awkwardness though, that day was still special, as it was full of the excitement and expectations of new beginnings.

    She walked home having fresh in her mind a couple of faces that she understood would be her new classmates, but she was nostalgic thinking at her former buddies whom she had spent her first 2 years of high school. She missed being at the former school in that day, when familiar figures would return after the long summer break, slightly changed by time and new experiences. But the girl had no regrets however with new direction in her schooling.

    Young Forest was eager to get home."Maybe today would be a big day with Cloud,"she told herself. He said he would call her to meet in town, after activities at school would be over. Maybe, she thought, since they were no longer classmates, he would be done with his constant teasing and confusing attentions and be ready for a more defined relationship. 

    At home though, it was not a good day for Young Forest. Her parents were having discussions, and when Cloud called indeed, her dad dismissed him in anger, banishing in a blinking of an eye the girl's hopes for the day. At the time, Young Forest had no other choice but to yield under the authoritative power of her father.

     Fortunately, the new school helped her escape tensions at home. Young Forest loved studying arts rather than economics, the program that she left behind. As if she did not want to keep up with changing time of her place and look at doors that were opening for business and entrepreneurial pursuits; instead she was drawn to the mysterious, to the less straight-forward field of art. Some of her former classmates, maybe even Cloud, had coined her as riding a white horse, hinting at her dreamy personality. But Young Forest was happy to discover that boys and girls at her new school were riding horses as well, each a certain kind, as they were tuned into creative work that needed goings afar.

    A boy from her class, River, took shape as one who was particularly friendly and sensitive; he talked with Young Forest from the first day of school and continued to share with her various ideas. Moreover,  he joined her at the same desk when at regular courses. Other boys even started to joke around about Young Forest and River as being sweethearts since they were seen hanging out more often and dancing together at the first party organized at their school.

    Later in the fall, a weekend getaway was organized by Little Forest's former classmates, and she could not miss it. "Maybe now," she hoped again, something significant would happen between her and Cloud. But he continued  his way of teasing her, up to the point of frustration. In the dancing evening, he would come towards Young Forest as if he would invite her to dance, but in the last moment he would switch to the girl near by. He did this a couple of times till Little Forest left the room. He came right after asking her what was wrong, so she replied "a stomach ache," and collapsed in an armchair by the wall of her room. He took a seat in the opposite side, and  there was silence and occasional glances on the lateral walls...

    As she stood there, some of his perplexing gestures scrolled through her mind like a slide-show, and she wanted to put an end to something that felt like an exhausting game...

    Like when he got close to her, so he could lift up with his lips the cluster of pink flowers from her mouth; she had found the sweet pea flower in the school's lawn, and had said to herself: "I am going to match my pink outfit with it, so I will keep it in my mouth like a toothpick." But he took it from her with so much care so he would not touch her lips, so ready to be kissed...

    Or when he caught her in his arms one time in a corner of an empty corridor and told her that she was his love, and Young Forest could not figure out if it was a jest-like manner or not, and what to say...

    Or when he asked her to come to meet him in town, so he could give her a couple of purple magnolia buds that she had admired the day before when they were walking on a street. While she was speechless and elated, he described to her his heroic climbing on the fence that enclosed the tree, in order to pick up the flowers... 

    And on, and on...

    "Yes, tomorrow," she told herself... "I will talk with him tomorrow when we will hike on the snow- covered mountain..."

    She simply asked him how long they would play the game. Apparently, he needed time and explanations  in order to know what game, but eventually he defined his behavior as fun between classmates, and told Little Forest about a girl that he was having a crush on. 

    "Ok, " she said, not totally convinced. "It was a test of courage for me, you know...," she continued, feeling relieved that she had found the guts to have such conversation with  him.

    But when they were traveling back, in the bus that took them home, Cloud came around her seat and started to tease her again, with his usual flirting smile, when he bit in a peculiar way his lower lip:

    "Young Forest, why are you upset?" 

    Young Forest was pensive and did not say much. Although sad,  she was also relishing the taste of some sort of victory. She had the strength to say what she had to say, to be herself, remove her masks, even though such behavior made her vulnerable. 

    Young Forest perceived her conversation with Cloud as the end of a romantic chapter. After all something memorable happened indeed during mountain trip. The fact that she later heard from a mutual friend that he had recognized his lack of sincerity on the snowy mountain, did not change anything. She did not fully understand his behavior, but maybe, in his excessive pride, he could not forget how she ignored him when they first met. Indeed, Little Forest could not fall for any handsome guy that came closer. She needed more. 

    She had started to see him differently when she heard him reading a poem of his, about the Moon and her naked shoulder, at a school event. Then she wanted to meet that side of him. But that side of him, she never truly found...And she thought more of him when a Tree sprinkled his late spring flowers over them, when they were walking on a trail in a park, and a whisper was heard in the back: "It rains with flowers over lovers..." Young Forest could feel the vibration of those wings of love, but...the truth was...she never went up too high flying with Cloud. At one point in the air, the soaring ceased and feathers fell down like leaves in the fall...

    But Young Forest was too eager to fly, to stretch wide her petulant wings, and launch on that big flight called love. It was the only way to fly the highest, she ascertained. A particular kind of love. A particular kind of intimacy that one can build with another. Even art needed wings of such love to manifest itself higher, wider, deeper...

    And then came River...