Something special within the season

©MCD

He realised something was happening when the bright seasonal decorations began to appear, first on the main door, then the lights on the window. Suddenly the night appeared to light up. There was colour pouring out of every corner of the building.

The snow made it evident winter had come. But that too was part of the season. You had to feel it was winter.

He didn’t care it was this cold. He was used to it anyway. It was freezing when he arrived a year ago. One year had already past. And now he was ready to celebrate a birthday. One that happened to coincide with the most wonderful time of the year.

He disliked the fact that people bypassed his own celebrations and he had to deal with the fact that every one was celebrating these days. He wanted to feel special. To have a day devoted to him. To have a day that was his very own.

Those who cared would make it so.

After all that is what family and friends are for.

Even if you are simply a kitten.

You still deserve to have something unique, especially for you.

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The leather bag and the half-ticket

Every time the smell of leather filled his nostrils, he remembered that incident on the bus. He was well aware why he had associated this pungent smell of processed skin with a means of transport. It was all because of the new leather bag the woman sitting on the front seat held full of pride that so dominantly inflicted its scent onto his subconscious. Whatever the case, despite the churning of his stomach every time that smell encountered his nose, he could not help but smile as he recounted that particular episode.

It was a day he was heading off for the airport for a business trip. He had scheduled his parting time from the town promptly, in order to arrive at the departure lounge with plenty of time to spare. There was always some unexpected adventure to happen on the way. It was bound to occur with his peculiar strand of luck.

And it did.

Once on the bus, he presented the driver with 1.5 times the amount for the ticket, as he did not have the precise change. The driver searched his pockets, his fanny pack, his side-lockers to find the right amount of coins to give back. All the while, our traveler waited, trying to hold on and not go sliding down the bus aisle due to the clumsy driving that was taking place at the same time. That is right where the woman with the pungent leather bag was sitting. He remembered it precisely because she wore a huge black hat with a black feather sticking out on the right side, and he recalled wondering what on earth was in that bag that could actually fit the crocodile out of whose skin it was made.

The bus reached the next stop and the driver was still frantically searching for change. He turned round and asked the passenger sitting behind him if he had some cash. Then he asked the traveler for some too. The traveler remained dumbfounded. If he had the cash, would he not have given the exact change needed in the first place and avoided this commotion?

Change was finally found and deposited in the traveler’s hand. Now all that remained was the ticket.

“Hold on. It’s not that simple”. The driver seemed confused and in disarray. So was the traveler. What on earth was going on?

At the fourth stop since the traveler had embarked, the driver got out of his cabin, took a ticket, validated it in the machine, tore it in half and gave one end to the traveler and the other to the old man sitting behind the driver. “I’ve run out of reduced-price tickets, so you’ll have to share one,” he said as he calmly returned behind the wheel and continued his shabby driving, satisfied he had sorted it all out.

The traveler gazed at his half-ticket in amazement. This was a first. But, he simply took his bag and moved a bit further down the leather-smelling front to finally sit down for the rest of the bumpy ride.

Even after disembarking from that bus, he could still smell the leather bag right until he entered the shower later that evening at his foreign destination. He had also kept the half-ticket. Just in case no-one believed him when he recounted this story.

Also part of Daily Prompt: Smell You Later

The revenge of the giant Aloe

Mrs Cliffson loved tending to her garden. Ever since she remained alone in her cozy, stone-built house in the metropolitan suburbs, she decided she would reinvent her garden. At least it would keep her busy and take her mind off being alone.

She began by bringing in all kinds of plants, from flowers to foliage to creepers. She bought all types and all sorts of varieties in order to create what she imagined would be the ideal garden to spend hours admiring. She even bought a small Aloe vera plant. One that would cure every rash or nasty cut she would ever have.

So she got to work.

She got out her spade, trowel and pitchforks and instantly created freshly sowed flower beds, as she also replanted all the plants she had bought from the farmers’ market.

Mrs Cliffson was excited.

She spent her days caring for her rose bushes, her geraniums, her basil and mint and even her cabbages. She had a little section cut off for edible products – such as cabbages, cherry tomatoes, and a series of aromatic plants. All around the garden the flower pots slowly bloomed, radiating their rainbow-coloured glow and embracing Mrs Cliffson’s soul. She was not alone anymore. She cared for something and that paid back. All her plants, in one way or another, returned the love and affection she devoted to them.

But her prize possession – her pride and glory – was the Aloe plant.

That little pot of the shy yet sturdy Aloe vera had within months grown into a huge plant that took up almost an entire corner of the back yard. But no matter its fierce appearance, that Aloe plant was what rescued her.

A few years after the birth of Mrs Cliffson’s garden, she had been diagnosed with a rare dermatological disease. One that would cause strange scars to appear on her skin, appearing as though it was slowly being scraped off. It was a condition that baffled even the most supreme of doctors. She had gone on all sorts of treatment and medication but nothing seemed to work. No-one knew what else to advise. The doctors had almost entirely given up; all they could prescribe now was hope.

Mrs Cliffson was sitting in her garden one day, resting in the wooden swing she had placed in between her flower beds. Her garden had become her refuge, her consolation. And that is when she saw it. The Aloe plant had grown so much that it had almost reached the swing. It seemed as if it was trying to reach out to her. As though it was offering a helping hand. And that is when the thought struck her mind. She immediately got up and cut off a piece one of the Aloe‘s leaves. The juice that ran out onto her hand caused a soothing sensation. Mrs Cliffson rubbed it across her scars. The consequence was almost immediate.

The next day, Mrs Cliffson woke up believing the days and months of running to the doctors was a distant nightmare. She stared at her hands in amazement. The scars were gone, leaving no sign that they had ever existed. She ran out to the garden. The cut-off Aloe leaf had grown back and the plant was complete.

Mrs Cliffson had found her cure. All it took was a little tender, love and care for something that seemingly could not repay you. It is surprising what those small “unimportant” things do for us. Even when you least expect it.

Can you do magic?

Candy was a sweet little girl. She was usually dressed in a brightly coloured floral dress and had her hair either perfectly combed straight falling onto her shoulders, either in two pigtails on either side. If she stood still long enough people actually thought she was a porcelain doll.
Candy had something special about her. Something that at first she herself didn’t even know.

She could do magic.

Not magic that needed cauldrons and potions, but magic that came from the heart. She discovered it by chance when one day that she was lying sick in bed she waved her hand in a “wish” feigning to close the window and draw the curtains, and all of a sudden it worked. She thought it was a hallucination at first, but the same thing happened when she wished for some more water, and when she magically produced another blanket on her bed.

It was official. Candy could do magic. She hadn’t told anyone though. Who knows what they would do to her – wire her up and treat her like a lab animal. And that is if anyone even believed her.

Candy progressively discovered she could do all sorts of things, which usually involved moving objects around without touching them, and other material stuff. She could not affect human lives, she was not Cupid or Zeus. She could just do some magic.

But she soon realized that all magic comes at a price. Hers was as simple as it was hard. For in order to practice magic, Candy had to be happy. She couldn’t do magic when she was angry or irritated. It was simply impossible. Even when she was so upset she wanted to break the glass window before her, she couldn’t do it no matter how much she tried – and she had tried pretty much everything short of getting a hammer and breaking it herself.

Then one night Candy had a dream that helped her explain all this. A bright pink butterfly in the form of a small twinkling fairy came over and sat on her nose. Staring into her eyes it told her: You only see the magic in your life when you are positive enough to be truly able to view the wonders that lie before you. Anger clouds both your view and your judgment. Try to be happy and positive. Magic will then come naturally.