She sat alone in the shadow of a tall beech tree, her knees held to her chest by delicate arms. She looked up briefly as a golden leaf fluttered down past her face, and then returned to gazing at the multitude of lovely people in the quiet park. She took them in with gentle eyes, and as they passed by, she often offered quiet smiles that went ignored. She didn’t mind. Most of the passersby were couples, both young and old, and groups of friends who walked in pairs and laughed loudly at murmured words the girl could not hear. But there were loners, too; people who walked for the sake of walking, or who sat beneath trees and looked up at the sky, drowning themselves in thoughts unknown. She was one of these loners, and countless times she had stared wistfully at her peers, longing for someone to join her. Unbeknownst to her, one such outlier wished fervently to sit at her side.
He sat across the park, under a tree of his own. It was twisted and dark in color, but nonetheless, the tree felt like home. She had seen him once or twice in passing, but had never bothered to stare his way. He didn’t mind. No one tended to pay him much attention, and he wouldn’t expect different from this girl. But he was intrigued by her open friendliness, and was often sorrowed when it went unreturned. Her face would fall, but only for an instant, before it smoothed into an expression of relative content. And sometimes, if he was lucky, she would sing. Never a whole song, but a line or two, and the words she sang were always exactly the words he needed to hear. He didn’t know how she did it, how she always seemed to know what was on his mind, and he wasn’t the only one who wondered. Others in the park would occasionally hear her voice ring out, and as the sweet tendrils of her song caressed the listener, hearts would melt and minds would ease. She made worries disappear. The only problems she could never solve were her own, as no one ever had the mind to sing back to her. But she wasn’t bothered; such is life. Like the boy, she was accustomed to living as a ghost, unseen by most of the public eye, though entirely noticeable by the ear.
On this day, the boy was particularly troubled, and when he sat down beneath his tree, he saw that she was too. She leaned back against the beech tree’s trunk, surrounded by its fallen leaves, with her eyes closed and her heart open, available for all to read. Quietly, she opened her lips, and from them spilled a melodious tune. The boy sat forward with a bit of surprise, eyes wide, mouth drawn up into a smile that shone like the sun at dawn. Troubled as he was, this was a song the young man knew.
Carefully, he rose, and left the shadow of the mangled tree he’d come to know so well. Stealthily, he crossed the park, his sight set on the beech. Once arrived, he offered a smile and took a seat at her side. Her song had halted, but that was okay, because finally, at last, the boy sang her fears away.
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