"Well! What extraordinary circumstances are these!' yelled Petra as she climbed rather ungracefully out of a lavender bush.
"Very! Indeed!" cried Alfred, who just happened to be the perfect height (although for what purpose, no one really knew) and wearing an acorn on top of his head.
"Alfred! do come and let me examine you, at close range."
Alfred was afraid of trees, and as they hadn't planned to meet specifically in a forest, they were, actually, in the middle of a forest, surrounded by trees and flowers and other positively frightening foliage, it was certainly understandable that he felt a little on edge.
"Oh! Not still peering into every bark curl and chrysanthemum bush, are you?" Petra remarked in disdain as she brushed the front of her petticoat.
"No! Certainly not!" but he stared around and gave a nervous twitch when a bird descended violently upon a nearby branch.
Petra sighed loudly. Alfred trembled. Petra looked over at the bird, coughed, then marched up to Alfred and smiled. "My, how tall you are now."
Alfred nodded, "Yes, well, height. Who can say how tall I am?"
"You're tall!" Petra commanded unnecessarily, for he was not. "And how very wet everything is." She looked around at the leaves and twigs, flower petals and fading crisp packets, all glistening in the weak sunshine as if covered by little diamonds.
"The rain..." Alfred started to say in a very unenthusiastic voice, and then stopped because Petra wasn't listening. She was bending over a fat log and muttering a string of 'yes's' and 'I see's' and 'most interesting if I were the interested sort, which I'm not's'.
"Appealing, as it were, to have a dandy chat out here but I must take leave-"
"Alfie! Love, come here."
Petra also wore a hat. Her hat was purple and tall, with a wrap-around black ribbon and looked like it could withstand an armed attack. Alfred sighed and trudged over, watching as she bent with surprising flexibility.
"Are you into Yoga?" Alfred enquired without care to her answer. He felt his legs start to tremble and wondered if he had chosen appropriate socks that morning to allow for leg-trembling. Ever so discretely, he pulled up his left trouser and glanced down. Orange.
"What are you doing?"
Alfred jumped. "Doing?"
"Stop playing with your pants and look at this," Petra held up a gigantic red leaf, about the size of her face, and twirled it around in her fingers. "What do you suppose this is?"
Alfred grimaced. If there was anything he hated more than trees, it was trick questions. Or questions that seemed like trick questions but turned out to be simple ones, leaving him with a red face that clashed terribly with his orange beard. "Uh, it's- it's a leaf?"
Petra rolled her eyes, "Of course it is! Does it not look like a leaf? Is it not red with soft edges and a thin stem that breaks when you twirl it too fast?"
"Perhaps."
Alfred stared at a pink chip packet lying near Petra's heeled shoe and thought of his home. He lived in a large wooden house two streets out from the city. He had small apricot trees planted in pots and various-sized birdhouses hanging around the veranda. It was all very calm and serene, unlike his current predicament where the two trees nearest him were having a rude, whispered conversation with loud sniggering and overly passionate branch-pointing.
"I protest!" Petra exclaimed suddenly.
"Protest!" Alfred screamed, jolting out of his pleasant yet unsettling yen experience. "What ever about?"
"This!" she waved her hands around at the general area. "I would prefer tea, wouldn't you? We have so much to catch up on, what with having eight years between now and our last visit." She looked him up and down fondly. He felt like a piece of rare candy on display. Cinnamon, he thought with affection, I would like to be something involving cinnamon, and not butterscotch in the slightest.
"Do you do cinnamon, at all?" he asked and flinched as a branch came swooping dangerously close to his head in the breeze. "Oh! It's just all horrible!"
Petra's gaze hardened and she seemed to gather herself up, "You do bring out their violent urges, don't you?"
"I what?"
"The trees. They seem to have unresolved anger issues whenever you're around. But, forget that!" she gathered up her skirts as if preparing to march onto a battleground, "Shall we have butterscotch fingers and reminisce?"
"Oh," Alfred drooped, as if she had sucked out all his air, and said: "Certainly. What happened to that leaf?" in an interested but obviously fake tone of voice.
"Leaves, really! How on earth do you plan on achieving anything on a daily basis if you keep stopping to smell the roses?"
Alfred frowned at nothing in particular because he had started walking.
"I daresay, Alfie, you have so much to learn on how to get on. I fear we shall need more time."
Her tone was absolute. They would, indeed, be spending enormous amounts of time on trifle matters, probably while eating an array of butterscotch-flavoured food around demanding, enraged foliage.
~
