Amarilla was not interested in the five pages of
Shakespeare that Durnham had produced. She said sharply, “What good will that do me, seeing as I am out here unable to read
or playact?”
Oh that Durnham, she though savagely, he is unhinged, unsettling, undemanding, and
very uninteresting!
Durnham said, “I agree! Wholeheartedly! If, and when, you
do partake in the breathtaking art that
is reading, you will no d-“
“Durnham!” shouted Amarilla (startled at the intrusive
thought that had just popped into her head like a ravishing jelly bean (and
although she’d never tasted a jelly bean, she had heard from many that they
were deliciously ravishing)) and tried unsuccessfully to turn her little pot
away from him.
“It is of importance!” he cried.
If Durnham were to have facial expressions, Amarilla
supposed that his eyes would be wide, like someone staring around a bloody mass
in horror, and his eyebrowse would be so high up his forehead that not even the
most skilled Eyebrow Scholar would be able to wrench them down. They would be
thick also, and maybe require a sort of cream to keep them slick. She sat there
in a daze of distorted (yet plausible) dreams, wondering just what colour
Durnham’s eyes would be, and drooping sadly at the intrusive thought and
impossibilities.
Durnham was a plant. He could never raise eyebrows or
stare at her outstanding foliage in admiration.
“I don’t suppose you have ever thought about wearing
shoes?” she asked him.
“…for it was Macbeth-
Eh?” Durnham looked up from his pages and Amarilla sighed raucously.
“Oh, dear, you seem- I mean, are you sick? Was that a
cough?”
“I do not get sick!” Amarilla cried and once again tried
to turn away.
Durnham cleared his throat and Amarilla imagined him
lowering his glasses in a studious way. Glasses!
She yelled at herself. Would he? Oh my, I
just…
“It’s always a pleasure to have you sit with me,
Amarilla, for I do know the ways of the world. There are crabs that clip, and
babies that use up all their mother’s sound until they are red and wet in the face,
there are bees that buzz and try to steal my pollen, but do I let them?! I do not! I have grown strong and sturdy and
purple! Or…” he trailed off, suddenly sombre.
Amarilla looked up, interested. Durnham was staring at
the crumbling wooden planks that made up their sitting bench, and he asked
quietly, “What colour am I?”
Her heart fluttered, her soil sank a little (her pot did
have useful holes in the bottom for drainage and midnight snacks), her little
leaves quivered and she tried very hard not to let Durnham see the expression
in her eyes.
“I believe you are purple,” she said steadily, and, she
thought proudly, rather brisk. As if she was handing out horrible medicine to a
line of noisy school children. She thought about medicine and the process of handing
out, she thought about horrible things that people take and the will it must
require to take them, and take them again, and she thought about raspberry
jelly. How did they get that stuff to fly planes? Then Durnham said: “Have I
always been? I have a bubbling of fear that is grabbing me with all its fingers
and there is a whisper, Amarilla, like a soft breeze carrying doom, like the
spiders that sit on my highest leaves and giggle terrible secrets at me in
their absurdly ethereal voices, I feel-”
“Oh for the sake of my awe-inspiring pot and all that it
holds! Durnham! You are purple! PURPLE I SAY! PURPLE!”
Dunham looked aghast. Amarilla curled and uncurled her
little leaves and the dry ones crumbled onto her soil and she swore.
“You are a tad brittle,” Durnham observed. He nodded.
Amarilla glared. Durnham said, not unkindly but also not as kindly as he could
have, “you are in stress.”
“Stress! I’ll give you stress-”
“I do not require stress,” he said at once, and ruffled
his five pages, “I require an audience! For the need to practice is sure up
there, in the clouds and the moon and the some such, if I am to achieve my
dreams and perspire!”
“Oh for the love of…” Amarilla started, turning away in
disgust, but she caught the eye of a snail chewing something green far down in
the grass. It was staring up at her, chewing slowly, maliciously, and with much
dripping of saliva. “YOU!” she yelled. She turned to Durnham and bumped him.
His pages fell. “It’s Sanrio! Durnham! He tried to eat my lower leaves the other
day!”
“Sanrio? Tried to? Lower? What?” Durnham peered over the
bench down onto the grass. “Oh it is. Hello there!”
“What are you doing?”
“Inviting him up!” Durnham waved excitedly and called
out, “Come and help the dreams unfold! Watch the beauty- I am the beauty,” he
clarified, “and let us dazzle you in a way you have possibly never been dazzled
before!”
“Durnham!” Amarilla hissed, positively incensed.
“What? I said possibly-”
“He tried to eat me!
You see this hole, just here, below
my head and above my stem submergence?” she stretched so he could see, “This is
a bite mark! A battle wound! I have
been in the wars and I survived!”
There was a moment of blinking slowly (Durnham) and
blushing furiously (Amarilla) and chewing repeatedly (Sanrio) until Durnham
said, “Bit you?”
Amarilla said, “Yes. May seventh, when you had that
Welcome Snails party.”
“Oh yes…” Durnham smiled fondly, then became serious, “We
have to take him down!”
“We do!”
“Attending our parties,
drinking all our rainwater (“It was tap,” interrupted Amarilla, “I never serve
rain to guests.” And she gave him a withering glare as if he should have known
this) and then taking part in a host
invasion!” Durnham’s leaves seemed to have grown taller and greener and
firmer.
Amarilla stared up in a fit of adoration.
“We must fight!” he commanded.
“Yes!” she squealed.
“We must conquer!”
“YES!”
“We must take back what is ours!”
“YES! YES! YES!”
Amarilla quivered in potential ecstasy.
Durnham looked absolutely majestic. They both turned and
glowered with all their might in a ferocious way down at Sanrio, ready for war.
But he wasn’t there.
“He’s gone!” cried Amarilla, in a surge of uncomfortable
anti-climax that made her shiny white petals dim to a faded off-white.
“The bloody coward!” shouted Durnham furiously, but also
partially relieved as, being an artist, he didn’t have the nervous system for
war and his petals were quite delicate. He often described them as being made
from the finest, most exquisite and expensive crepe paper in all the land.
(“You mean tissue paper,” Amarilla liked to remark with a snort, “crepe is a
fancy term for tissue,” and as Durnham could only read Shakespeare, he never
knew if she was right.)
“It was all the chewing!” Amarilla commented, “His
chewing somehow aided his speedy escape!”
“Quite,” Durnham pleasantly agreed.
Amarilla frowned, “What do we do now?”
Durnham cleared his throat and rustled his papers, “Let
us continue! We will conquer! We will open up the heavens, and let it all rain
down, for that is what it does when the heavens opens! It rains! And we will rain along beside them!”
Amarilla sagged, “Oh good heavens, help me…”
#
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