Mushrooms and Painted Skies

I find myself sitting on the brick steps in front of a lovely old house. The house is two-story, painted green, with knick-knacks and a few metal-wrought tables and chairs decorating the porch. Up a set of well-worn stairs, a cozy coffee shop is tucked away. There, the walls are painted warm colors, paintings are hung, and scattered everywhere. A few of my pieces hang around too. I'm quite proud of those. They're so surrealistic, and I'm always surprised to find that the brush that paints so smoothly is in my hand.
The muted tone of the band playing ukelele's and horns comes flooding out of doors and reaches my ears. I am on sitting on sun-warmed bricks, my fingers wrapped around my choker necklace, fiddling with the glassblown mushroom, trapped in a teardrop of glass. I watch as the sky floods through shades of color.

First the sky becomes a wash of blues, that fade to purple. A smashing pink lights up the horizon, purple candy clouds dance away from the sun. The sky fades to the most beautiful orange. "Thank you," I whisper. I knew God knows what my favorite color is, but I hardly realized that He loved to create the perfect orange, and to decorate the sky with it - just for me.
A man came and sat down next to me. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Mhm," I barely answer, lost in the beauty of the shifting oranges of the sky, the licorice and lavendar clouds, and the sweet scent of the sun-warmed evening.

The band had stopped playing, and I heard someone else strumming softly on his guitar, singing love songs or lullabies. His voice sounded like love itself as it is whispered to your heart. But his song ends, and I hear someone else play something more upbeat, on a soft electric. His voice sounds almost sad, and I feel suddenly as though my heart wants to know a thousand secrets, but has a thousand more to tell.
I suddenly realize I have been sitting for quite a long time, as my backside has lost all feeling on the hard, unforgiving brick.
I stand up, and lean against a wall; it's siding that has been painted purple, and decoratively painted with what looks like the potential for a faerie tale. I think it looks silly, but in the evening's glow, it somehow enchants me.
To the right of me is a low wall around the porch, between which I had been sitting on the steps. A cat is laying there, so lazy and self-satisfied. He has long gray fur, and his fluffy, ragged-looking tail flips about lazily, as if swatting something in his half-sleep. His fur rippples with his purring. I reach out and pet him.
I reach down, smoothing my sun-yellow skirt, then peer back at the boy who joined me. "What took you so long?"

-end part 1- (possibly more to come...)

© copyright by Michèle Aimée Lahaie, 2009