• Summertime Chocolate


    As I get out of the car there's a little blonde girl waiting for me, wearing a white sun dress. Her blonde hair flows down to her waist and she looks like an angel.

    Shyly, she stands at the door, holding onto the frame, her bare feet rubbing against each other, but she gathers the courage to call, "Hello, Destiny!" I wave back even though I don't know her and call "Hello!" she laughs, like triads of bells, and runs back inside.

    I've been walking up the front walk and now, just a few steps away from the screen door that's flung open and propped that way with a brick, I can smell a spicy sort of chocolaty smell as I get closer.

    When I peek in the door, hesitant at first, another little girl, this one with brown hair and a pale pink sundress ,grabs my hand and leads me into the house.

    The first room I only see briefly because the little girl in the pink dress is leading me so fast through it towards that chocolate smell.

    Then I'm inside a kitchen. This is clearly where the chocolate smell is coming from. There are stacks and stacks of chocolate cookies - dark chocolate milk chocolate semi sweet chocolate, even white chocolate.

    As I'm looking around, awed by the amount of chocolate in this room, I see a woman, with copper colored hair in tight spiraling curls. She's wearing a dress like the other two little girls, only hers is red. She has white skin and is a little plump, and looks quite like an angel herself.

    "Hello there!" she straightens up, putting a pan of cookies just out of the oven on top of a stack of other pans. "I've been waiting for you!" she laughs, and it's a child's laugh, a triad of bells like the girl in the white dress's laugh.

    At her laugh, the two little girls appeared, the one in the white dress carrying a huge pitcher of the milk, and the one in the pink carrying four tall glasses.

    The woman ushers us all into a big room with open windows that have light purple curtains flapping in the breezes let in by the open windows, and the smell of roses wafting in the room. "DANIEL!" calls the woman as I stare outside at all the roses in the yeard, and suddenly I see a man walking in carrying a basket of roses. Here and there he stops to pinch off a dead head with callused fingers, then he comes inside, hands the woman in red the roses, and plants a kiss on her forehead. She beams back at him, then sits down at the table with him. The table has a towering pile of cookies on it and it's blocking me from seeing any of their faces.

    The little girls put down their loads and lead me towards a chair across from the couple, and I sit obediently. The lady in red puts cookies on my plate and pours me a glass of milk.

    Then everyone helps themselves and we all sit eating all the cookies and drinking milk out of a pitcher that never runs dry. When the cookies on the table ar gone, everyone stands up and I mutter something about needing to go. The woman in red just laughs. “Silly goose! We have prepared your room in the back - we’ve barely made a dent in the cookies and we’ll never get anywhere without you.” she beamed and kissed me on the cheek before the girl in white shyly took my hand and led me to my room.

    As I climbed into the bed I heard her whisper I’ll see you tomorrow, destiny,” in her shy lisping baby’s voice and see the moonlight catching her hair and making it look silver white before she turns and leaves, shutting the door and leaving me, the moonlight, and the lavender alone.