🙤Something Beautiful🙦

Juniper smooshed her cheeks into her hands, tossing a lazy glance out the library window. It was usually her favourite window. The one that looked out over the garden. It offered an especially fabulous view in Summer, when hundreds of rose, lily, and sunflower blooms splashed the world in a smile, when mounds of lavender overstepped the garden borders, when dahlias, like natural kaleidoscopes, nodded their heads in a warm breeze.
The Spring and autumn were no less lovely. They were not the same as Summer, but each had its own way of going about beauty, whether it be poking the soil with a million green spears of hope, or tucking the year in with a rusty blanket of leaves.

Yes, every season had some kind of charm, Juniper thought. Every season besides now. 

She thrust out a pouting bottom lip, locking her eyes on anything in the room other than the window. She couldn’t look again. It was too depressing. Everything was drowning under a steely February rain. She could hear its icy fingers drumming against the roof. With every tap she frowned harder. Why must February exist? How dare February exist? It was the shortest month of the year, and the most pointless. Nothing was beautiful. All it did was delay the happy arrival of spring, and keep suffering little children like Juniper indoors for that much longer. 

What was one even supposed to do when trapped inside? 

As she was brooding on this thought, her mother’s voice drifted up the stairwell, calling her to luncheon. 

She slid from the window seat she had been mourning on, and dragged herself to the kitchen. The moment she pushed through the door, the warm scent of cardamom biscuits enveloped her in an invisible hug. Her basil-green eyes immediately brightened.
Juniper slipped to the edge of the counter where Mother was readying another biscuit tray, and rose to her tiptoes. Her head came just high enough to see over the countertop. She snuck a little hand toward a tray come straight from the oven. Mother glanced over just in time to shoo her away. 

“Juni! Leave those alone! You are not having sweets for luncheon!” 

Juniper gazed longingly at the biscuits, like Eve at the Forbidden Fruit. “Just one?” She begged, giving mother her most innocent look. 

Mother pursed her lips in a way that said, ‘Don’t even try.’ 

She pointed to the table, where leftover beef stew from yesterday's dinner steamed in a bowl. “There’s your lunch. Eat it before it goes cold.” 

Juniper slumped into her chair with a sigh. After a few minutes of stirring her stew, she asked, “Mother, what am I opposed to do today? I’ve been so bored I think I might die!” 

“It’s ‘supposed’, not opposed, dear,” Mother replied. “And, as for what you should do, I believe you should go outside. The fresh air will do you good.“

Juniper’s mouth fell open. “But mama, it’s cold and rainy!”

“You have a coat and umbrella for a reason.” 

“But! —” 

“Juni darling, eat your stew,” 

  🙤✿🙦

Juniper should have remembered that one is not supposed to ask an adult what to do when bored. But she had not remembered, and now here she stood sulking in the rain. Her red umbrella arched over her head, water cascading over the edges to puddle around her boots. Despite her protests, Mother had persisted in her opinion and pushed her out of the house. Mothers really could be domineering when they wished. 

Juniper started down the muddy path. Cloudy water sloshed around her feet, and the standing chill of February seeped into her fingers. 

Up above, the charcoal clouds looked as gloomy as her mood. She kicked at a deep puddle collecting in a rut in the road. 

“Can’t it just stop raining?” She complained to the sky. 

In answer, a teasing titter sounded from a nearby tree. She looked up into its spangled branches. There, puffing its chest like a proud gentleman, a robin stared right back at her. 

“Are you laughing at me?” Juniper asked. She planted a tiny hand on her hip, and squinted against the rain spattering her face. 

The robin cocked his sharp black eye at her. He chirruped, and fluttered off.
“Wait for me! You think you can speak like that and get away with it?” She dashed after it on her short legs, splashing through puddles. 

The robin came to rest in a bramble bush some way into the trees. Juniper, puffing and rosy cheeked, stopped a little distance off, and crept further forward. Mother had taught her that it was good to approach animals slowly if you didn’t want to frighten them. 

“Hello, mister robin.” She cooed, holding a hand out. 

The robin twittered at her, and flapped away again. She huffed “Well! I think you’re rude anyway, so see if I care!” 

She let her eyes fall to the ground again, the world dimming to soggy boredom. 

But what was that? 

There, beneath the brambles, she caught sight of a bright patch of green beneath all the brown. Moss. And it seemed to be thriving. 

She tilted her head to the side. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you hate the winter too?” 

Kneeling down, she gingerly pulled the thorns aside. She reached down and stroked the wet moss, like a plump pillow beneath her fingers. 

It was so pretty. A spot of green, awake when all else was sleeping. Juniper smiled at the thought. Maybe there was something beautiful in winter. The robin, the moss. Such ordinary things that would not usually have seemed quite this great, and yet, they seemed all the more wonderful when framed in grey. She found herself wondering if there was anything else beautiful she could find in February. 

She sat back on her heels and closed her eyes. Listening. breathing.
She heard the sound of the rain pattering into puddles, rolling off tree branches like crystal glass. She smelled the raw winter air, polished silver by the rain, and the frozen earth. Earth that was busy incubating baby seeds for Spring. It must take a lot of work to grow, Juniper thought. Especially tucked away in the dark…. And then, what if…. What if boring winter really did have a purpose besides delaying Spring? 

She opened her eyes to see raindrops slanting across her vision like a multitude of diamond beads. They caught the muted light and held it like stars in the heavens. 

Juniper's fingers and nose were pink and numb from the chill and glowed softly against pewter surroundings. She climbed to her feet, taking in the slumbering winter with different eyes. 

Somehow, the branches looked less like prison bars warding off Spring-tide. They were only protecting life from the cold until the world was ready to receive it. And as for that same cold, it wasn’t just a bitter twisted frown trapping her indoors. It was like a long night. A night that, though dark, allowed the world to rest away from the distraction that sunlight so often brought.
It gave the opportunity to lay slow foundations that were strong enough to support towers even to the clouds. It was a time for preparation before a journey.
Juniper would have explained it to herself this way, had she been older and more eloquent. But she was a young child. So it struck her that Winter was like her bedtime. Mother told her to go to sleep because it rested her for the next day. And, though she wouldn’t admit it to Mother, Juniper always felt better in the morning if she had a good sleep rather than stubbornly keeping her eyes open all night long. 

So she said, grinning up at the pearly sky “Winter, you are like a long, long nap.”

And perhaps that was the best way to put it. After all, it is the time when the whole world settles down to sleep the cold away. And, was sleep really that bad, Juniper thought? Didn’t nighttime often come with her mother tucking her into her cozy bed, with a mug of milk?
Didn’t it come with bedtime stories?
Didn’t sleep come with dreams? 

Juniper rather liked February. She skipped into a run, heading toward the house to spill her discovery to her mother. 

And as she broke through the veils of icy rain, and dashed across puddles, she didn’t notice when a cascade of water kicked up by her boots showered over a little jade sword poking through the earth. 

A single shoot growing toward the clouded sun, strong and vigorous after a whole winter of rest. It was the first waking promise of the preparing Spring. 

Like the pale glow on the horizon that is the first telltale sign of dawn after a night of sleep…. 

And if Sleep comes with dreams, then this must have been a dream come true. 

  🙤✿🙦