The woman stood at the end of the fence row, with the sloping hill to her back. Her hands were folded together over her belly, and she was gazing along the road that ran about the base of the hill. Robins were warbling in the bare, frosted branches of a tall, broad oak tree, that overshadowed her with its boughs. The sound seemed peculiar to her ears.
It was still winter, after all. The grass was a melancholy shade of beige, soggy and limp after many cold rains. And the wind was frozen. Its damp kisses bit at her exposed fingers and cheeks, and fluttered her shoulder-short hair to get at her earlobes.
Pensive rumination had held her in place for an hour or more. Unmoving, a demure statue of fluid, deep curves over breast, waist, and hips.
Was it some semblance of hope that she felt, after meeting and speaking with him? He bewildered her as much as he ever did. Alternately gruff and brutish, angry and harsh...and then soft-spoken and unsure, pleading and anxious.
Her face turned blithely to look along the road in the opposite direction, as the morning swelled, pale and colorless around her. The crumbled circle of ruins could be seen in the distance, where they had stood and talked. Was progress made there? Their words were polite and controlled. As if they'd been flung backwards two years, to the days when they first met.
No answers came to her mind. Her countenance remained placid and serene. There was no fretting now. She had fretted enough in the past three years; more than any woman should ever torment herself with.
Another voice joined the robin. Twin serenades filled the cool, still air.
The woman lowered her eyes in thought, and there at the base of the fencepost, she saw a bright, verdant shoot of green. Standing vivid and tall from the limp, slumbering grass that would have choked it if awake and lively. Its head was bent over as if it, too, were deep in its own reverie.
The woman felt the corners of her lips pull into a small, gentle smile.
