Write one leaf about something that stops your heart.

The Trek by Bat

Stepping lightly, the light recedes slowly above the treetops far above me. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in my gut, telling me to go back to the safety of the treeline; to run over the grassy field on the other side until my lungs want to burst with freedom. Yet I trek forth, reminding myself that it’s only a few more yards, right there, down the small ravine, and just on the other side of the large rock off to the left.

Pebbles chase my brief descent, into what was probably once an actual ravine, as the air becomes colder from a sudden breeze. If it weren’t that I needed my hands to catch myself in case of slipping, I would have tucked them into my pockets; let them brush against my house keys and the tissue I keep in case of a runny nose. The ravine smells like damp moss, and the shadows that are gathering at my feet as the sun continues it’s trade off with the moon makes me nervous. The shadows mock me with their deceitful facades, tripping me with rocks barely visible in the dimming light.

Here the walls long ago, decades ago — perhaps a century — crumbled and collapsed, allowing the woods around it to spread down and within, making the ravine small and wimpy as it was slowly filled in. A large stone sits to the left here, an ancient relic of a time when the small stream some distance away used to flow like a mighty river through this area. My hands are scraped from using the rock as leverage to climb the odd angle of the ground around it. With a sigh of relief, I make it and peer around the rock, dusting my hands on the denim of my jeans.

The sun is nearly gone, crickets chirp nearby as I spy a red blanket laid over the ground; a small battery powered lantern sits in the corner of the spread. Yet what makes me inhale sharply, heart stopping a beat — two, three, several — is the goddess seated upon it, leaning against the rock as if she had waited in perfect beauty and contentment since the beginning of time for me to come and find her. I can’t help but picture her resting against the rock with a river flowing strong behind her back.

“Hi,” she says, and her smile makes me hasten to drop to my knees on the blanket beside her.

“Hi,” I somehow manage, feeling as if my greeting is small and unworthy to the beauty it was aimed at.

She takes my hand, miraculously warmer than my own, and kisses ice cold knuckles that almost don’t register the heated, soft lips through their chill. I feel unworthy of this, as if trapped in some reversed version of a simple servant to her queen. Quickly I take her other hand and return the gesture, savoring the heat of skin, and feel as if I had righted things. We exchange a glance when I pull away that makes me blush and quickly scurry to sit and press against her side, lips capturing lips.

I understand, in the brief glance, that she sees the same thing that I see when I look at her - a goddess. Heart-stopping perfection.

(Source: writeoneleaf)