It was a single raindrop falling that was capable of completely changing my perspective of the world, I discovered, and whether more followed that entrepreneurial drip of wetness I cared not–for in acknowledging that lonely ounce of moisture I became lost to a sprightly heart and mind and How all the nasty occurrences what had sprung up to attack me during the day as a result of my interactions with the human race then blinked out of existence! That single raindrop what interred itself on my cheek so adroitly removed me from apathy and thrust me into a fired pan of vivacity that my legs, usually reserved to feelings of idleness in the late mornings, then ached and demanded use. My whole disposition aptly changed, the world cast off its impressive goldenrod shawl of dishospitality and in its stead then whisked around its slender neck a kinder scarf drawn all up in hues of blue and blue-gray that invoked sensations of mystery and awe and loveliness.

At the first, after I parted with my kind, old friend, my protector over many years, itself reluctant to see me go, there was a long pause before any other droplets of rain shivered from the swelling overcast. It wasn’t until I had traced a fickle path from my porch to the woods some ways down the road that I perceived any others; I saw their marching columns and streaming lines in the forever green trees and I pondered what sort of destiny had brought that first raindrop to bear down and touch me and subsequently return sensation to my melancholic countenance when so many tens of thousands of acres all rested under the steady glare of the blue-gray clouds. It might have fallen in the lake, or a puddle, where it would have known kinship, or it could have buried itself in the warmth of the soil and nourished the trees but it had chosen me–chosen to nourish me and feed me and afford me some semblance of eagerness when there had been none known to me for quite some time; I fancied that that raindrop, which had so effectually altered the mindset and pathology of one as myself, if even for a short time, could have known no better ending to its transient existence than to kiss the skin of my cheek, for now so many millions collapsed out of the weeping sky only to vanish to a bleak nowhere and none of them were forgotten, for none were realized, individually, as that first drop had been.

Bundled all eloquently in asymmetric thoughts of philosophy, my petulant legs swept me dearer to the sprawling woods where I could traipse the trails and taste the sweetness of the trees in the air and glance the vistas of the natural world what were invisible, shady things like shadow-lake sprites which only ever appeared during the darkening hours of the storm and rain and always in the beauteous gloom.

The tall conifers which encased me as I spent my sudden energy hiking up that veiled trail were made wispy at their tips by a diligent breeze and the deep green what adorned them all was juxtaposed masterfully against the crisp, charcoaled overcast in such a way as to form a spectral vividness in both tones and I was made to fancy that there had never been a more fated union of hues than the trees against the sky that day. The path I followed called for familiar footwork; there I skipped over an ambushing stone; there I straddled the cadaverous remains of a felled tree; and there I addressed the stages of the process what would get me across an intersecting stream, unsoiled, that saw me pouncing across the various dry humps and stones until I reached the other side, my movements matching the grace and dexterity inherent to the fleeting, reticent creatures what then watched me from vantage points in deep clusters of growth, their eyes black marbles and yielding a propensity for abandonment without notice.

Through pinched listening I gradually earned an awareness of a scratchy melody, drifting nearer me through the skinny trees. I instantly became enamored with the music that seemed attractively paradoxical in its souciant, yet shrill call. I yearned to understand the source of the sound, and I made a quiet consignment to solve the mystery of the yet distant song, for mystery it was: in those woods, in the shivering afternoon, there ought to have been present an enormous langour, unbroken excepting for the pit-pat-patting of the streaming rainfall against the earthen surfaces (against which not even my obtrusive feet could find an outlet for creating clamor); and understanding that any discovery I forged would surely mean an interaction of some type with the conductor controlling the flow of the sometimes discordant notes, a chance meeting, I was sure, that would rank very near the pinnacle of awkwardness any one person could endure without subsequent death, I pressed on undeterred.

Still infused with the livelihood given me by the ambrosial gloom, I was tickled to find that my inquisitive notions could be sated without my having to venture far from my originally-intended end destination: I perceived the rising and falling sounds of the song as drawing louder in my approaching ears as I wandered nearer the Doll Witch Well; the well itself, the fancy of a wealthy recluse, then long gone off by decades, was an adornment for the acre of land he owned that he enjoyed frequenting on walks. However, unlike the house that the old man lived in, and the old man himself, along with his thoughts and aspirations and worldly significance, the well had not slipped from recollection–only from repair. I had committed myself to a type of relationship with it after discovering it one day while engaged in a hike, where thitherto the well had suffered through many years of solitude; like the old recluse once had, I too frequented it in my wanderings.

The rainfall, nearly spent, had let up considerably to the point where it was fragile and wispy enough to be commanded by the wind, but I wasn’t minding of the failing storm for I was close enough then to the place of the Doll Witch Well to acknowledge the presence of a young girl sitting on the duddie edge of the stony ring what made up the well, and I absorbed the brilliant orange of her iridescent taffeta gown with awe and uncertainty:

The dress was form-fitting and strapless and was split into two noticeable sections, with the uppermost section beginning just above the center of her torso, covering her bust with reservation, and ending as a jagged, zig-zagging pattern just below her waist-line, sewn flawlessly into the lower section of the dress, and was characterized by clusters of orange oak leaves with golden stars and flakes interspersed that formed an assumed texture of roughness; the lower section of the dress, sharing the same orange hue as the upper, was simpler, yet certainly regal, and fanned out. Not attached to the dress at all, but certainly an accoutrement what had been designed to accompany it, was a taffeta necklet worn by the girl that was made up of the same design of clusters of oak leaves and gold flecks and stars as the cloth emblazoned across her mid-section.

How strange it was, I thought, that a girl with such potential for beauty available to her should be so well-fitted in accordance with that potential in a place as wet and slimy as became the woods when it rained. The puzzlement I felt towards the young girl was heightened by the violin she held firmly pressed against her frame, the case for which I could not spot anyway, and neither could I locate any other type of bag or personal affect–surely she didn’t force her way so far into the woods in those ornate slippers? And without a coat or umbrella or any kind? I supposed she had however, as I sadly glimpsed the mud clinging to the hem of her dress and splashed all over her slippers and round her ankles. The dress itself was made to gleam even more in its state of saturation and I couldn’t imagine how she was responsible for the music I had heard while caught in such an extreme state of crisis as I was sure she must then be in.

But play she did, as if completely oblivious to my newly acquired presence, and I viewed and interpreted for the first time the struggle and frustration that she labored so intensely through to muster each stinging note. I didn’t interrupt her, for I had satisfied my desire to understand the source of the music, and with the rain ending I could feel myself slowly transforming back into my melancholic self and subsequently turned the focus of my intentions to returning as hastily as was possible to my house. The sudden radiance of a familiar melody–a lullaby belonging to some deep place in my own antiquity–sang out and all my thoughts for back-trekking home were lost to me and I resumed my post half-hidden in the green and black of the woods where I could listen to and watch the girl.

I listened to the song, coming and going, rising and falling, and through it lived vicariously. She eventually switched melodies, but by then I was helpless to turn away or otherwise abandon sight of the girl, for my curiosity, what would see me afforded an understanding of the steps that then had led up to her current circumstances, was piqued and rendered me utterly immobile. She wasn’t horrid with her handling of the instrument, and I went as far as to wager in my thoughts that she even seemed quite dexterous, and though her fingers and arms seemed reluctant to work in the fashion that was necessary for masterfully promoting the notes, she managed to cope and I wondered what artist didn’t struggle with his or her trade while attempting a masterpiece. This is what confounded me so: I could easily understand the force and impulse to find a private and solitary place in which to play, what might fill a lesser practitioner, but this girl seemed worthy enough and I couldn’t believe that someone, somewhere, wasn’t just a little let down that she wasn’t there playing for them.

She seemed a very young girl–perhaps no older than one still attending high school–and for that her skill and expertise were justly increased in my own mind. I badly wanted to just reach out with my voice and ask her her name, her age, her reasons for being so removed from the world, the purpose that saw her so beautifully clothed–but I couldn’t bear the social awkwardness of promulgating myself to her, neverminding that I was certain she would only have felt distress at learning of my presence.
I remained quiet for those reasons, but after awhile of watching and listening to her, unnoticed, I felt as though I had been given a kind of understanding of her; while I thought it a great wrongdoing what had been delivered unto her, I saw no way to rectify it or to even console her against the feelings of sorrow and isolation I was sure she was made to feel.

She played for an awful long while and to the very last of it her melodies rang out with enthusiasm and eagerness and then finally she lowered the violin and stood up, cast a single glance into the dark well and then at the sky, and turned and went off to whatever home and lifestyle had shunted her.

***

Corbett Jayce Robley

Corbett Jayce Robley has foregone inclusion of a bio.