When I started writing today the rain was hammering down outside and I fancied adding a bit of colour. As images go it’s nothing earthshattering: a holiday snapshot taken while I was visiting my folks in the US. Not a special tree. Most definitely not in a special location. But I was there, and it felt good.
Often when I take these photos it’s with a story prompt in mind. I’ll see something and a story-stub pops into my head, so I take the picture and post it here. Possibly that’s cheating. I don’t think so. Obviously, otherwise I’d do it differently. Well, whatever way you cut it this one definitely wasn’t cheating. I almost didn’t use the image as I couldn’t think of something to write for it. Which is pretty much the closest I’ve come to writer’s block. Then I remembered a random wittering with my daughter while we were out walking a while ago. Let’s see if I can make something of it…
Margo loved autumn. When asked, sometimes she would claim it was the colours. All those rich oranges and reds pushing to overwhelm the last hardy snatches of green as if the trees were burning away their summer foliage. Other times she would say it was the tastes. Yes, the obvious pumpkins and spices and all that. Also, that rich, earthy, not-quite-smell taste on the air. Most people didn’t seem to get that in Margo’s experience, which was probably why it was her favourite flavour. Some day’s her answer was that she liked when it was cooler. Being luminously pale, summer was a time for covering up and sweltering. The alternative was sunburn so hot it could launch rockets.
If you got her in the right mood, she might claim that the season had a sense of potential. Like the world was getting ready for something.
Cynics among us might claim that she liked autumn best because her birthday was in the middle of it. Not a bad reason, in fairness, just not Margo’s reason. Until the week after her thirteenth birthday, Margo didn’t know the real reason either.
On the morning of the 26th of October Margo awoke to grey skies that threatened insidious drizzle. The kind of rain that seeped in everywhere without having the courtesy to form proper puddles. The air felt charged. Not the heavy pressure of an impending thunderstorm, but rather a lively, light, electrical feeling that left the fine hairs on her arms standing up. It crackled against her skin when she moved.
Her mum, of course, denied all knowledge of this. “What an imagination,” was all she said in response to Margo’s enthusing.
She left the house with a spring in her step, despite the dreichness of the morning. The aliveness of the world had somehow never been more apparent before. Margo breathed deeply and sighed contentedly as she reached the crossing and jabbed the button and waited for the traffic to stop.
It wasn’t a day for looking down, but something drew Margo’s gaze to the gutter.
“Oh, poor thing.” Margo crouched to inspect the body of a dead hedgehog. Clearly the victim of a hit-and-run in the night.
Although she knew she shouldn’t touch such things, something drew Margo’s hand toward the small corpse. She stopped it millimetres from the creature’s prickles. What was she even doing?
CRACK!
A blue spark shot from her palm into the dead animal. She yelped and jumped back, more from shock than pain. She stared accusingly at the hedgehog, though what say it had in the matter was beyond her. Surprisingly, the animal stared back at her, with an expression halfway between ‘thank you’ and ‘what… just… happened?’ Then it stood up, shook itself off and hurried away under the hedge on the far side of the pavement.
Margo stared in disbelief at her hand. Had that just happened? She was sure it had been dead before. Hadn’t it? Never mind dead. It had been flat. In the far distance the steady beeping of the cross signal gained a harmony of impatiently honking car horns. Eventually the green man was replaced by a red one and the cars moved off. If she’d had any attention left, Margo would have seen some inappropriate gestures from the driver of the front cars.
“Oh, get over yourself!” yelled a voice from beside Margo. It was Frankie, Margo’s best friend.
“Hey, Frankie,” said Margo distractedly. She was still staring at her hand.
“Are you alright?” asked Frankie. “Something wrong with your hand?”
“No, no. All good,” said Margo. She dragged her gaze away to look at her friend. Frankie was pale as death, apart from around her nose which had been rubbed raw. Her eyes were bloodshot and tired looking. “Are you alright?” Margo finally asked.
“A bit under the weather,” said Frankie. “I’ll live though. What happened to you?”
“I…” Margo bit her lip. How to tell Frankie without sounding insane. She laughed at herself. How to tell her what exactly? “I really don’t know.”
An idea suddenly seized Margo and before she could chicken out or over think it, she grabbed her best friend’s hand. Instantly she could feel the energy flowing. In from the air around her and out through her hand. The power of change, of purest autumn. She knew it for a certainty, while also knowing that that made little sense at all.
Colour returned to Frankie’s cheeks. The cracked, chafed skin around her nose healed. Even her posture shifted from the weary stoop of an unwell teen to that of an energetic youth in the thick of living her best life.
“Woah!” said Frankie. “I didn’t know you could do that!”
“It’s news to me too,” said Margo.
“What else can you do?” asked Frankie.
“Let’s find out.” Margo grinned at her friend. She jabbed the crossing button again and the lights changed immediately. The friends skipped across the road together ready to make some changes.
Brandon Lim 