The flower child yawned, her eyes closing against her will. Her head fell forward as sleep overtook her. She realized it at once and jerked herself awake. It lasted half a moment before she nodded off again. She began to fight it once more but her dreams began to whisper promises of wondrous things and tempted her to stay.
She pulled her hood lower as she stepped through the wood, willing no one to notice her there. “Think like a flower,” she told herself, and kept her head down.
Not every spider appreciated a web with a view as much as Penny did, but that didn’t matter to Penny. She hummed a happy tune as she spun her web, stopping now and then to have her spidery breath stolen away by the sight of the flower that sheltered her from rain.
His nose was to the ground, for he never could get past his awe of watching something grow out of the earth. And, oh, the wonders he saw! Yet through it all there was one he missed, for he never saw the beauty of his own self; never realized the wonder of his own fragile body as it grew up from the tiniest of seeds.
Those first green things, so timid in the light and so unafraid of frost, are the bravest souls I know. Before the trees unfurl their leaves they’re there, daring to bloom in the sunlight while it lasts. Before it’s hidden away. One glorious week or two of brilliant life until it fades away, happy, satisfied, willing to wait another year for its time in the sun to come ’round again. I wish I could be half so patient.
Jennifer Shelby 