The sun dipped below the horizon, the last of its light drenching the forest in an orange glow. A small girl sat against a tree and dragged her hand through the grass. Her light hair glinted under the sunset. She hummed to herself, plucking daisies from the colorful bursts of flowers peppering the forest floor.

From her left, footsteps crunched between the noise of chirping birds and rustling foliage. The girl looked. A man in strange, worn clothes came up beside her and crouched onto one knee. “Hello,” he said in a low voice.

The girl gave him a small wave. He looked deeply into her eyes and saw something that made him avert this gaze. She tilted her head and reached out to touch his face. He slowly turned his head back to face her.

Sunlight cut through the trees, and gold pooled in the man’s dark, tired eyes. The girl froze, her hand hovering in the air. Images of those familiar eyes flickered in her mind. “Papa?” she whispered.

“No.” The man sighed. “No, no. I’m not him.”

She frowned, but the more she tried to grasp for the images in her mind, the more they blurred. Perhaps she was mistaken. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Do you remember yesterday?”

The girl thought. Yesterday, she was playing in the forest. She told him so.

“And then?”

And then…

The girl shrugged, and the man’s jaw tightened. She glanced away and began to twine the flowers between her fingers. For a moment, she closed her eyes and listened to the fluttering of wings as birds scattered from treetops.

“Do you know your name?” asked the deep voice beside her.

The girl’s eyes snapped open. She stared at the man in confusion and shook her head.

“Do you know where you are?”

The girl nodded.

The man smiled. “Where are we?”

She watched a gentle breeze drag leaves across the grass behind the man. A squirrel scrambled up the bark of an oak. “The forest.”

The man’s smile wavered. “Okay. Yes, we are in the forest. Do you want me to talk with you?”

She nodded shyly, and the man sat down. “Let me tell you about frogs.”

The girl’s face lit up. She loved frogs.

He talked about frogs as orange bled from the sky and the moon rose to bathe the trees silver. Glass frogs were “see-through” because you could see their heart and bones through their skin. Poison dart frogs were toxic. Tomato frogs were very round and red.

After some time, the man glanced at his watch and abruptly stood. The girl reached out to stop him. “Sorry,” he said. “I have to go home now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

The girl nodded and lowered her hand.

The man gazed at her, pale moonlight washing out his features. “Goodbye, grandma,” he said quietly.

And he walked away. The girl puzzled over his words as she watched his figure disappear between the trees. She leaned against rough bark and closed her eyes. She would ask him tomorrow.

Edited by Allie Dean

Artist Statement: With the ending of this piece, I intended to reveal that the main character of the story was not a small girl, and was in fact an old woman suffering from dementia. The story’s forest setting was a hallucination, and the man she met was her grandson. Despite the story embodying “bloom” with its descriptions of nature, the girl in the real world is withering.