Page 63 - North Star Magazine 2022
P. 63
When the weather was nicest and the sun shone bright, Beeatrisa would venture out into the surrounding forest. She would hear songs through the leaves of the emerald trees in the time of the gemini. Nature was her friend, and her teacher.
Beeatrisa didn’t always live alone within the walls of the forest. Many moons ago, she and her grandmother coexisted in the cottage. Beeatrisa would read out in the sun, while her grandmother would paint the hostas—as well as the magical forest around them—outside their garden. Her canvases were made from tree rounds that were cut from fallen pines around their cottage. She would mix paints from berries, leaves, and flowers within the forest. These would turn into deep purples, lucious blues, and vibrant reds. Her paintings would reflect the forest that surrounded the cottage, and sometimes ever featured her granddaughter reading in the grass.
This was a lovely time for young Beeatrisa and her grandmother. The women created their own utopia—a world that was their own, where no one could tell them what to do. Their lives revolved around each other and Beeatrisa couldn’t bear the thought of losing the most important aspect of her being. Without her grandmother, she wouldn’t want to go on.
The young girl would soon find her grandmother starting to forget things. She found that her grandmother would forget to add color to her once detailed paintings. Then, she began to forget to add paint to the brush, and soon began attempting to paint without wetting her canvas. The young girl soon found her grandmother quitting art all together, and found her basking in the sunlight, as the activity was simple. Beeatrisa found it odd, but not surprising considering her grandmother’s age. Although Beeatrisa noticed how her beloved grandmother’s memory started to fade, she believed that it would get better and have the grandmother she once knew back in her life. The youth within Beeatrisa was showing, as she was ignorant facing the changes present in her grandmother’s mental state.
One sunny day, her grandmother wandered away, and never returned home. Beeatrisa assumed her grandmother went out to find more berries for paint. As the warm sun started to set, Beeatrisa started to get worried. When she never returned home, her worry turned to anxiety. Beeatrisa ran out of the cottage through the deep woods in search of her grandmother. But as the night grew dark, the young girl became too afraid of the fate that faced not only herself, but her poor grandmother as well. As she went around the corner, by one of the oldest