#babies...........

upon waking up that morning, winifred had decided two things: today, i will be named daisy. today, i will be the apprentice to a great painter. the stains on her skirts might easily be paint instead of mud, and she had weaved flowers into her hair, taking her new title seriously. on her way to their usual meeting spot, she picked several more for gift and gratitude. ( stole them might be a better phrase for it, plucked straight from an old man’s basket as he headed down the street. why should an old man have them, when the flowers were much better suited for her fair skin? ) it was a marvelous day. 

the music --- oh, the music greeted her like home, and she stood for a moment, watching leonard play. she tossed the flowers to his feet, and how perfect he looked, how righteous. he might be a vision planted at the creation of the earth; he might be playing the first music the angels heard. 

winifred hastings would have clutched her hands together. she would have felt faint with love and pinched her cheeks when others looked away to ensure she was flushed with it. but she was not winifred hastings today. she was daisy, and she had paint on her skirts. 

she took out a small scrap of paper and began to sketch on it --- the delicate slope of the instrument, the way he held it, the looped way the music hung in the air. she knelt, using her knee as a table. ( had she ever used her knees in such a way? ) she wanted to laugh, she wanted to share the moment as leonard finished, but the world crept into her sphere. 

The waterfowl have started nesting and you know what that means!