The Birthday Present - part 2

[Deleted Member]

He watched her for the next 7 days trapped behind a thicket wall and his own unseeing eyes. He watched as on day 8 she removed her summer dress and bathed in the river. He observed as she swirled without an ounce of elegance and shrieked some sounds as though she were chanting an ancient chorus. He noticed as the birds replied. He saw how engrossed she had seemed in that conversation, as though it was the first time she had ever really been heard.

It made him hesitate and consider his intentions. Why had he followed her? Had he been worried? Or just compelled to watch? He knew it was her birthday soon. Perhaps he wanted to give her something. A grand gesture. He felt in his pockets and found an old humbug, a few coins and the key to his car. There had been a time when if he had pulled up beside her, thrown her the key and said, 'take us outta here!' that she would have obliged in an instant. He had promised her once that one day he would come and take her. But that was long ago and far from now, and the woman before him was not the woman he had once known. The car key was no longer an option.  

As she let her clothes drift away, she suddenly seemed free in her naked form and her old companion almost felt ashamed to keep watching. Watching whilst she laid in the sun and puffed at dandelions which would fall upon the curve of her chest. And still watching, when she leapt and danced with the little brown rabbits as her bottom and breasts jiggled along with joy. He had never seen her naked before and he felt that he should probably look away or leave. But he couldn't. He had this feeling of an important thought that had lingered in his mind for too long. It was her birthday and he needed to give her a gift. The greatest gift she could ever imagine.   

A bird cawed in the tree behind. It startled them both and caused the naked woman to turn in the direction of her voyeur. Was it a warning or just an announcement? The watcher moved out of the thicket from view and fell backwards into a field of grasses and dandelion puffs and daisies. A daisy reached up and tickled his nose and he remembered the time she invited him to make a daisy chain so big they could wrap themselves in it and stay connected forever.

Though his fingers were fat, his eyes were keen, and he set to work on her birthday gift. Such was his concentration and endurance for his task, he barely kept watch at all from behind his thicket wall. The chain grew long and great. Occasionally a stem would and break the chain. He thought about how sad this would have made his old friend. The idea that a daisy might be too fragile or broken to be within the chain would have made her so forlorn. He could not cast those fragile flowers to the floor, so he kept all the broken daisies in his pocket until he could think of what to do with them.  

On day 12 he was stopped dead from his task by a sudden shrieking sound. His eyes were drawn towards the noise, which seemed to seep from the woman’s skin and not her mouth at all. It was a melancholic enduring sound. Almost like a final longing plea. She kept on and on beyond what seemed physically possible until she collapsed in a heap with tears streaming from her pores. And yet with each collapse she would rise again with sounds that were soft and mighty. Sounds that shook. On and on and on. Relentless.  

And just when he thought she might be endless afterall, he was awoken from some trance-like state she had bewitched him into by the suddenness of her silence. Startled and uneasy, he ***red through the thicket. The spot where she had writhed in what could only be described as a dulcet ***, was empty. She seemed to have vanished as if into the air.   He looked at the daisy chain he had made. It was drying out and withered and barely holding itself together. How could he give it to her now? Was it even what she wanted?
 

[Deleted Member]

This is a lovely piece of writing. You are obviously a very talented human.