Yes master, p.15
Yes, Master, page 15
“Our apologies, Bennett,” Andi said through giggles. “It has just been a very long time since either of us had thought about that.”
“I'm not sure I even want to ask for details!” I retorted, chuckling at them.
“You probably do not,” Vila said. “Let's just say it had something to do with chicken feathers, dung beetles, and a whole lot of honey!” My curiosity was piqued, but I decided not to ask for further information. Somehow, I had the feeling it was something I would have needed to be there to see. Instead, I just shook my head and smiled at the two of them.
“Come on,” I instructed them. “The park is just over here. Hopefully, there won't be too many people. We don’t need more around thinking that you're nuts!”
“Yes, let us hope!” Andi piped up in sarcastic agreement. We walked out of the delivery area and crossed a small, residential street before we reached the park. It was hardly more than a tiny patch of grass with a small playground and a few benches. The perimeter was lined with pine trees, however, which made the place feel like it was completely separated from the outside world. The trees shaded the park so that it was at least ten degrees cooler than the rest of the city. After stepping through the trees, both girls stopped and took a moment to look around.
“This is like a mini oasis, now isn't it?” Andy commented.
“That is a good way to put it, Andi,” I agreed with her. Andi smiled sweetly at me and then instantly turned to Vila.
“Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said just now?” she whispered to Vila, acting as though she was my favorite.
Vila laughed directly in her face.
“Delusions of grandeur have always been your specialty, now haven't they?” Vila asked Andi, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
“No delusions needed in this case! Ha!” Andi huffed. If I ever hoped to get out of the park and back home, I realized I needed to get the girls on the same page.
“Ladies! No in-fighting! I have something fun to show you, but I'm not going to do it if you two are bickering,” I told them matter-of-factly and then stuck my nose up in the air as if greatly offended. The two of them instantly cuddled up to me.
“We aren't fighting! Just the opposite, in fact!” Vila hurried to backtrack.
“Vila’s right! We are the best of friends and always will be! No need to worry about us!” Andi joined in the sucking-up. I smiled down at the two of them and started shaking my head.
“Of course, that's the case. It's just what I thought,” I agreed with them and rolled my eyes. They looked almost fearful that I was going to take away their surprise, so I took each of them by the hand and walked towards a very specific bench on the other side of the park. When we reached the bench, we walked behind it, and I had the girls stand still.
“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Vila asked anxiously.
“Just wait a minute, you will know when you see it, and when you hear it,” I told her.
I hoped that what I was trying to show them would cooperate. I had seen it here twice before at the same time of day, so I thought the chances were decent. As it turned out, it was less than a minute before a tiny scratching sound started emanating from a nearby tree. The girls instantly looked up to see what was making the sound. A squirrel climbed around from the other side of the tree trunk, about halfway up the tree. It stopped at what looked like a knot in the wood. The squirrel stayed there, tail flicking for several moments.
“It looks nervous,” Vila whispered.
“Shhh,” I told her, putting my finger to her lips. Even the slightest sound would scare the squirrel away, so I had learned. We continued watching as the squirrel started climbing around the trunk of the tree. She would pass underneath, and then above the knot in the wood. She must have gone around at least fifteen times before she stopped again. Then she suddenly disappeared into the tree trunk.
“Where did she go?” Vila gasped.
“Shhh, that knot in the wood isn't actually a knot, it's the opening to her nest,” I explained. “Just watch.” The three of us kept our eyes riveted on the spot on the tree where the squirrel had disappeared. A few moments later, she came out again and perched above the hole. Slowly, three furry faces stuffed themselves into the opening of the hole at the same time.
“Oh my! Are those baby squirrels?” Vila whispered as quietly as she could for as excited as she was.
“Yes, they are,” I confirmed.
“I've never seen a baby squirrel before!” Andi whispered. I watched as the girls stared adoringly. The mother squirrel only paused for a moment before she scrambled back to the hole and started nipping at the babies to push them back inside. Then she disappeared into the tree after them. I turned to the girls, held my hands out, palms up, and shrugged.
“That's the whole show!” I told them, speaking at a regular volume once again. “You've probably never seen a baby squirrel because they don't leave the nest until they are completely ready to forage and live on their own. By the time that happens, they can look nearly the same size as their parents. I found these guys last week on my way home.”
“They’re so adorable! Their tiny little faces were so squishy-looking!” Vila gushed.
“And all three of them stuck their faces out at once! It looked like a fur-plug in the hole!” Andi added adoringly. I smiled at the girls as they marveled over the squirrels. It had been a simple discovery, but one I thought they'd enjoy, especially since the chances of seeing something like that in a city were much smaller than elsewhere.
“Will they come back out soon? Can we stay?” Vila asked hopefully.
“They will most likely not be back out anytime soon. Twice I have waited for at least an hour to see if they would come back out, and they never did,” I told her.
“Ah, that's too bad!” Andi sounded a little disappointed, but happy at the same time.
“We can come back again another day and see if they are out,” I said. “For now, let's get headed home. It's been a long day.” Both girls slid up next to me and wrapped their arms through mine.
“Thank you for showing us,” they said in unison, laying their heads on my shoulders.
“You’re both very welcome,” I told them. I had a weird sense of satisfaction, knowing I had been able to show them something unique. After all, they were able to create pretty much anything from thin air, truly impressing them felt like it could be a heroic feat. Yet, I had succeeded.
“YES!” I accidentally called out aloud, getting a little too wrapped up in my proud moment. The girls looked up at me, puzzled. Oddly enough, they didn't ask any questions but instead smiled across at each other knowingly as we continued walking.
13
By the time we had returned to the apartment, the sun had started going down. Once inside the door, I collapsed into my lounger. I was more worn out than actually tired. The girls swapped out their legs for mist and started floating around the place, chattering about the squirrels, the fun they'd had messing with Blake, and what they'd learned about landscaping. Then I heard Vila say Lottie’s name.
“That Lottie girl sure was pretty,” she mentioned to Andi.
“She seemed so outgoing and sincere, too,” Andi added while wiping down kitchen counters.
“It's a shame she chose that nasty Blake character to spend her time with,” Vila said, shaking her head.
“I don't know, Vila. I'm not really sure that she did choose Blake,” Andi pondered.
“How so?” Vila asked.
“Well, I realized she didn't tell him to go away really, but she looked almost like she was in physical pain when he put his arm around her,” Andi explained.
“I wonder why she would let him do that then,” Vila said, sounding concerned. I agreed with Andi, Lottie had looked extremely uncomfortable since the moment Blake walked through the door.
“Sometimes, girls just make the wrong decisions. Love is the universal unknown,” Andi replied. Her statement got me thinking. What if there was a way to control love? I wondered how things would work out for people if that were the case. I sat up on the edge of my chair and looked over at the girls.
“What about controlling love with a wish?” I asked them.
“How do you mean,” Vila wanted to know.
“If somebody wishes for love, or for a specific person to love them, wouldn't it take the ‘unknown’ out of it?” I wasn't sure if I was properly vocalizing the concept I was pondering in my mind.
“Are you asking what happens when people make a love wish?” Vila suggested. I thought about it for a moment, and although I wasn't really thinking of making a love wish myself, it piqued my curiosity.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I answered her.
“Would you like us to show you?” Andi offered. The girls’ visions surrounding possible consequences of the wishes that they'd shown me so far seemed much more powerful than simply hearing about it, so I figured a vision would be a good way to go.
“Yes, I would like to see that,” I told her.
The girls floated over to me, and each put a hand on one of my shoulders. As before, they squeezed slightly, and suddenly, I was somewhere else. This vision was different, though. I saw it as though I was an observer, instead of having anything directly happened to me.
A man and a woman sat on a couch. The television in front of them was on, but I noticed the woman was not watching it. She was gazing out a window that was to her right. The man stood up and started to walk out of the room but paused.
“Would you like me to bring you anything from the kitchen?” he asked her.
“No, thank you,” she replied, never taking her eyes off the window. Her response was polite enough, but her tone was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on how she sounded, but I got the feeling that she was simply unhappy.
While the man was in the kitchen, the woman got up and walked out of the room. The girls and I followed her, invisible to her sight. She went into a bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled a phone out of her pocket. She slowly dialed a number and held the phone to her ear. Somehow I could hear what she was hearing, which was ringing on the other end of the line. Then, a man's voice answered.
“Hello,” the voice said. The woman sat there but didn't say a word.
“Hello?” the man on the other end of the line repeated.
I saw a single tear roll down the woman's cheek, but otherwise, her expression never changed. She was completely straight-faced, and her eyes were almost glazed over. She opened her mouth as though she was going to say something, but then she closed it again. There was a long silence before the man spoke again.
“You can't keep calling me like this,” he said. “I'm not sure why you call me to begin with.”
Another tear rolled down the woman's face. The man on the other end of the line broke the connection, and the woman slowly lowered the phone to her lap. She took a deep breath and sighed as she let it out. Then she stood up, wiped her face with the back of her hand to remove her tears, and walked back out to the living room to sit on the couch once more.
I was confused. I thought the girls were going to show me what happens when somebody wishes for love, but all I was seeing was a woman who seemed almost as though she was in mourning.
The gentleman who had been sitting on the couch beside her, returned from the kitchen with a glass of iced tea in his hand. He sat next to her and went back to watching his television show. He started laughing at the program and turned to her.
“Now THAT is real comedy!” he said, thoroughly amused. “Doesn't this guy just make you crack up?”
I watched the woman's face, and it was as though somebody flipped a switch. She became instantly engaging and started laughing at the show as well. She went on to talk about a documentary she had seen about the comedian that was on the television, and the two of them laughed as they chatted away.
I looked at Andi and Vila. Both had saddened expressions on their faces.
“What does any of this have to do with a love wish?” I asked them.
“That man made the wish that the woman would love him so that they could be together,” Andi said quietly. “That is all you need to know for now.”
I turned my attention back to the couple just as Vila snapped her fingers. Suddenly we were standing in a kitchen, and the couple was at the table, getting ready to eat breakfast together. The man had food on his plate, but the woman didn't.
“Aren't you going to eat?” he asked her.
“No, I'm not hungry, thank you,” she replied. Once again, her response was very polite but short at the same time. She took a drink out of the coffee cup in front of her, set it down, and stood up. “I’m off to work.”
She rounded the table and kissed the man on the cheek before exiting the room. The man put down his fork and started rubbing his temples as though he had a headache. I was about to ask the girls what any of this had to do with a wish again when Vila snapped her fingers again.
Next thing I knew, the couple was back on the couch in front of the TV again. They were wearing different clothes than the first time I'd seen them, so I assumed that I was watching them on a different day. The woman was staring out the window once again, while the man was watching TV. He looked in her direction and scooted a little closer to her. He put his arm around her shoulders, and that is when I saw it. Her face showed pure resentment as clear as if somebody had tattooed it on her forehead. The look was fleeting but had most definitely happened. After that, the man and the woman went back to engaging about a show as they had the evening before.
Vila snapped her fingers again, and we were back in my apartment. The girls let go of my shoulders and floated out in front of me so that I could see both of them. Each looked sad.
“I don't understand what any of this had to do with somebody wishing for love,” I said to them, hoping for an explanation.
Andi floated forward just a tad. “People don't tend to wish for just love. They wish for a specific person to love them. That is what the man you saw had done.”
“But that whole situation was so weird, the way they were acting. It almost seemed unnatural,” I replied.
“I want you to think about their faces. Tell me the emotions you saw while you were watching them,” Andi instructed me.
“The woman looked like she was longing for something at first,” I remembered. “Then she looked sad when she was on the phone and also like she didn't really know what to do. Then she looked so resentful when he touched her. The man seemed to be in a pretty normal mood while they were watching TV. So, I guess I saw contentment.”
“What did you see at the breakfast table?” she asked. I thought of how the man was rubbing his temples after the woman had left.
“He looked frustrated without being angry after she left. And she seemed almost indifferent, but still considerate of his feelings,” I replied.
“Okay, and again when they were watching TV that last time?” Andi floated a little closer to me.
“I saw the woman’s demeanor completely change as it had the first night. She went from looking longingly out the window to engaging with him over a TV show.” I was starting to feel like I was being quizzed.
“There was one other thing that you saw, Bennett. What was it?” Andi urged me to remember. I replayed the scene in my mind to see what I had missed. Then suddenly I knew what she was talking about.
“I saw her flinch when he touched her,” I started. “She seemed uncomfortable in her own skin, but he didn’t seem to notice.”
“He noticed, but he didn’t show it externally,” Vila joined our conversation. “When he wished for her to love him, she loved him, but she didn't stop loving someone else. Since she could no longer be with that someone, she had to mourn her loss of them but didn't know how. There was no closure on the chapter of her life that came before the man wished for her to love him.”
“And while he seemed mostly happy, that look you saw on his face in the kitchen was resentment,” Andi explained. “He resented that even though he knew she loved him, he still did not feel loved. You see, love, as an emotion on its own, is rather miniscule. It isn't until you tie it into all your other emotions that it is able to grow and flourish. It has to be paired with longing, respect, joy, confidence… all of those things plus more. If it is not, it simply takes a back seat. It’s there but isn’t active, can’t be shown.”
“So when the man took her love for himself, he left all the emotions tied to her love for someone else unraveled, just floating around, for lack of a better analogy?” I was starting to see what the vision was meant to teach me.
“Exactly,” Vila confirmed. “And because love could no longer tether those feelings together, sadness stepped in.” I took a moment to wrap my mind around the awful nature of the entire situation. I felt bad for the man who had made the wish, but I felt worse for the woman. I saw that love was not something to be controlled by an outside force, but rather a glue that could create symmetry for all other emotions.
“Wow, I believe that if I tried to think about all that for too long, I’d end up with a migraine!” I told the girls. “Note taken, don't wish for love!”
“That is pretty much the main lesson there,” Andi said. She chuckled a little at my quick summary of what I’d taken from their preview.
She and Vila whisked off to the kitchen and started cooking dinner after that. I decided that I should jump in the shower before I ate. A thought occurred to me as I stood up to go into the bathroom. The look on the woman's face when the man had touched her shoulder, was very near the same as the look Lottie had on her face when Blake touched her. I felt a shiver run up my spine as a creepy feeling started gnawing at me. Something just didn’t seem right about Lottie being with Blake. Perhaps I was just jealous? Or maybe I was worried?
At that specific moment, I couldn't discern which was true. What I did know was that I had some very strong feelings for Lottie that I had not thought about in a very long time. I felt a small bit of sadness well up, but I stuffed it down and went to take my shower.
