Shedding Light on the Family Tree

It’s Free Write Friday and this week Kellie Elmore has issued a word bank challenge.

Deposited in the bank this week are:

foliage – amber – wicker – aroma – sweater – cocoa

And here’s my free write ramble, lightly edited …

The Season of Senses

Mirabel stepped off the front porch step to the pebbled path way and stopped. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment, and then released. The air was bright with the sharp scent of rain-drenched foliage. It was a heady fragrance, filling her with a sense of gratitude for another summer past and the fullness of life represented by autumn.

Summer’s last gasp, she liked to call it, shooting flames of colour through the woods. “Remember me! Remember me!” the dying season seemed to say. A canopy of amber, crimson, rust foretelling the arrival of a season of frigid dormancy.

Winter wasn’t Mirabel’s thing. She preferred long rides on her horse through the withering woods, with the crunch of freshly, fallen leaves beneath Cally’s hooves; the sparkle of sunlight scoring through baring branches; and the soft, warm fragrance of the dying summer flooding her senses.

Autumn was the season of senses.

She stretched her arms out to the side like a flying bird and tilted her head up to the sky, closing her eyes as if to take in the changing season even more deeply. To feel its dampness on her skin; hear the call of migrating geese in her ears; smell the sweet decay of summer’s rotting blooms. She could almost taste it so heightened were the flavours of fall by remnants of rain.

Rain.

A drop here. A drop there. On her forehead; her eye lids; her cheeks; the back of her outstretched hands. She opened her eyes. It was true. The spit-fall of rain drops had started again.

She turned and climbed the stairs to the covered porch and settled into her wicker rocking chair. Pulling her favourite Arran sweater tighter about her to ward off the damp chill, she observed the rainy scene for some time before realizing that what she really wanted, right now, was for someone to bring her a lovely hot mug of cocoa.

“Ben, honey …!”

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Thanks for visiting …

Dorothy

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©Dorothy Chiotti, Aimwell CreativeWorks 2013