Of Puppets and Flowers

By emeraldoni

There was once a boy who loved to play with puppets. Throughout his childhood the few creatures he could relate to were made of wood. Their painted faces grinned at him at him with blank eyes and wide smiles with ragged clothes and stiff legs. Twine raveled from limbs and, though they tangled easily, the boy loved making them move at his every whim.

When he was young the boy who loved puppets had a father. His father was an older man, hair gray and face wrinkled, a man who had seen his years and felt every one of them. The boy’s father loved puppets as well, and was well known for the strange tinkering of the artistic toys in the darkness of his cellar.

The boy never knew his father, never understood his father, until the old man died.

The boy who loved puppets had a mother, a demure woman who had an obsession with rag dolls. Every day after finishing her job of washing laundry, she would take rags and sew them together, with embroidered blank eyes and absent smiles. There were no strings attached to these dolls for their limbs were limp as they were tossed away into a corner, only to be looked upon on the whim and a wish of better times.

He never paid any attention to his mother, never contemplated her life, until the widow died.

The boy who loved puppets lived alone in a small cottage placed on a deserted cobblestone street with a jungle-like garden. No change followed his life. Empathy was foreign, as well as anger and joy. What made the boy was sadness, a loneliness that was only held at bay because of his beloved puppets, with their blankly painted faces and wide, maniacal grins.

Years passed and the boy who loved puppets turned into a young man, maturing in body but unchanging in mind. And every hour, every minute, even every second, the young man who loved puppets worked on his beloved creations, the outside world passing him by, completely unnoticed.

OOOOOOOO

There was once a young girl who loved to play outside. Throughout her childhood the few creatures she could relate to were plants and her siblings. Their gleeful faces full of life were imprinted in her memory, with a background of the wild making her fill with warmth. Dirty fingerprints peppered her arm and daisies were tangled into her hair, and the girl loved napping in abandoned fields, surrounded by her family.

When she was young the girl who was wild had a father. Her father was a young man with humorous eyes and a ready grin. Every day, early in the morning he would go out to the fields, working to support his family. Her father was well known, and friends with many, and was always welcomed to an open door.

The girl cried when her father died, but she did not mourn, instead embracing her family tighter than ever.

The girl who was wild had a mother as well. She was a loud, boisterous woman with a wide waist and an aptitude for making pies. Everyday, after scolding her children and cleaning the home, she would make a dinner more fulfilling than a royal banquet. In her free time, she would write down recipes, never forgotten, to be passed down the generations for her children.

She loved her mother, and cherished every memory after the widow died.

The girl who was wild lived with her siblings in a house too small but never cold. They lived next to a silent street with cobblestone steps and good-hearted neighbors. Her life changed and she grew, surrounded by family and her beloved flowers, soon blooming into a young woman. And every moment her face was painted with emotion, whether sad or happy, and she was always content.

Years passed, and the young woman who was once a girl grasped every second of her life with an avid exuberance that pleased many. And so the young woman remained wild, flower tangled in her hair as she dozed in abandoned fields.

OOOOOOOOOOO

There was once two people that were completely content with their lives, yet longed for something more. They had everything they thought they wanted, and though their masks remained in place, inside they knew there was something more to be gained from life.

And so they waited and wished and longed and hid and everything that a person did who was content but longing for something else. Until, one day, a change occurred that brought both stumbling and blinking into lives so different from their own but so very comfortable as well.

For the two met, in a splash of coincidence and a spark of confusion, bumping into each other haphazardly on a crowded cobbled road. Both fell back in a spray of daisies and puppets, eyes wide with shock, staring at the other as they rubbed their smarting rears.

And so started the gears of time, dusty with age and covered with webs, they groaned into action as the two, with mere coincidence, meshed into the others lives with something akin to accident but had more to do with fate.

Time passed, as it is wont to do, and joy took place in the form of an unexpected love and a wedding that brought contentment to both sides, for the boy who loved puppets found he loved the girl who loved flowers even more than his little workshop where his lifetime obsession took place.

And they grew old and wise as the aged are expected to do and they lived happy until the boy who loved puppets noticed the speckles of silver in his loved ones hair.

A horror seized his chest, for in his frivolous state of denial, the boy who loved puppets expected them to live together forever, change a factor not a part of their lovely existence. For nights he secluded himself away in his little workshop, building puppets while pondering over the inevitable that he did not wish to think on. And with that, he made up his mind.

One night, a night that was warm and sticky and made one wish for the cool relief of fall, the boy—who was now a man—invited his wife up to the little workshop that sat quaintly in their attic.

Whispering soothingly into her ear, smoothing her hair away from her glowing forehead, the man who loved puppets whispered his heart into her ear.

“Be with me…” The girl—now a woman—who loved flowers smiled up into her husbands features with a trust few ever accomplish in their lifetime.

“…Forever.”

A flash of motion, a rush of pain, and the woman who loved flowers fell into a heap on the ground, falling into a conscious sleep from which she would never wake.

And with a proud smile, the man who loved puppets displayed his most beautiful creation in the window of a small shop, though it was never for sale. She had a perfect smile and sunlit hair and eyes puzzled with betrayal.