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I swallow any nervousness that tries to kidnap my emotions. I need to stay neutral, open, and honest. Personally, I believe Flora’s the real deal. The fact that she’s been ostracized in my small town reveals this to me.
“Yes, I am. I’m Sadie. And you’re Flora.”
“You want to see my living quarters. I can see that in your curious green eyes. You’re a very pretty woman, you know that?”
“Thank you, Flora, for the compliment.”
“I don’t bite, but I don’t hide. People hide from me because I can see who they are. What’s on your mind besides what I live with?”
I’m not sure she wants me to answer that at this moment. The fact that she’s holding her front door for me with visible impatience tells me she’s moved on already in her mind.
Stepping inside, I find her home to be warm, but it’s almost supernatural how cooling her small window fan is. I sit at her round wooden kitchen table with a cup of iced tea and two floating lemons. Her home smells like dirt and flowers, as if we are somehow in a garden bed. Thankfully it’s of nature and not filth. She likes hanging shawls on her walls and is a collector of big wide crystals.
Sitting across from me, I study her face trying to guess her age.
“Fifty-three,” she randomly says.
My ears tingle as it’s apparent she just read my mind.
“Wow. What else am I thinking?” I randomly think of a loaf of bread because I can picture her baking one helluva delicious loaf.
“Food of some sort. Are you hungry?”
“Damn, you’re good!” I gasp.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Flora. No, I am not hungry.”
“Sure. And you, my darling…are in love?”
My heart races because love is not what I would call it. I think I’m a little infatuated, if anything.
“Is that what you see?” I ask.
“You have so many emotions dancing around you. Whatever you’re involved with, there are a lot of feelings. Sip some tea and breathe easy. I don’t bite, and when you leave me, you’ll feel so much better.”
I trust this because I don’t know what else to do.
“You need to be careful,” she says, “because something is brewing, and I’m not telling you what it is because you’re too emotional to handle it now.”
Um, I’m not sure if that’s the case. I’m really concealing my feelings, but of course, she can totally feel them.
“Sometimes, Sadie, we have to go through waves of discomfort and forest living before we find our castle.”
I swallow my urge to laugh. I have no clue what any of this means, so I stare at her box fan’s spinning fins. If her walls could talk, I wonder if they’d share all the crazy energies or remedies they’ve seen.
“Okay,” I say.
“You’ll understand the meaning when it’s time. But I will say the feeling you have for this person is mutual. He wants you too. Very badly.”
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“You know it in your heart. He doesn’t want you to know, and you know why. What he doesn’t know is if his dedication to someone’s belief about who he is…is bigger or more important than what he feels for you? The answer isn’t too far away, but you’ll have to wander in the depths of a forest before you find your castle.”
“Hmmm. Okay.”
For whatever reason, I’m picturing Little Red Riding Hood but not the childhood story. I’m actually thinking of the rotten sex joke where a Little Red Riding Hood bumps into the Big Bad Wolf, and she pulls down her pants and says to the wolf, “Eat me like the story says.” I’d better stop thinking crazy things, especially since she probably knows what I’m thinking.
