(I’m honored to have the wondrous
Sonia Rai voice this story.)
The shop was empty, which surprised Clarissa, because the quality of the items arranged neatly on the shelves was clear. Jasmine jewelry with the glowing green of natural stone, no heat treatments. A pewter creamer that softly reflected Clarissa’s delighted smile and felt like butter on her fingertips. A small glass figurine, delicate pink tutu appearing to waver and pink ballet shoes lifting the dancer into the gift shop’s lightly perfumed air.
On a surprising whim, Clarissa spun lightly around, the shelves and gift items whirling in her vision. She felt like a ballerina herself. She stopped with a self-conscious blush. Thank goodness there were no other customers to witness her inexplicably theatrical behavior. There was only the salesgirl behind the counter who, Clarissa suddenly thought, looked awfully young to be running the shop alone. The girl regarded Clarissa from across the shop with pale blue eyes that reflected a summer sky streaked with brushes of white cloud. Clarissa forced herself to look away.
Clarissa’s eye caught the figure of a small bird, fashioned with what appeared to be real feathers and bright eyes of small shining stones. She crossed straight to the figure and stood before it, transfixed. She’d seen it before, a souvenir from her family’s trip to the redwoods the summer she turned 16. Clarissa felt the heat rise in her face. Next to the bird sat a shell glowing with pearl in its cupped interior, a keepsake from her honeymoon with Todd on the Cape. Clarissa looked up in quiet alarm and gazed more carefully around. There was the purple silk scarf presented by her grandmother on Clarissa’s 21st birthday.
Clarissa stood frozen in thought, then crossed to the salesgirl and stared into the girl’s transparent blue eyes. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” the salesgirl smiled. “And so are you.”
Your comments often offer me a slant on my work I hadn't even thought of. Given how you write, I suspect that, like me, you sometimes gush words onto the page without even wondering what they might mean. And your words are forever bursting with insight and emotion, resonating in the heart and mind of the reader like a gong summoning us to some higher awareness. Anyway, your kind comments about this story made me think about what it really means in a way I'm not sure I was thinking when I wrote it. Thank you!
OMG! Bob, I enter into to read your stories now with my hair already standing on end because I know you are going to take me somewhere I don't expect and I will delight in that. This story, no exception. And this one made me cry on the spot. What we have are our memories. Lordy, let's be sure to keep making them!