Friend of Liberty (cont.)

This girl, this wondrously colored girl, couldn’t have been more unexpected if she had dropped in from Mars. I wanted to reach out to touch her, just to see if she was real, and perhaps also to see if some of that delicious color might rub off onto my own paleness.

“Oh!” I said. And then again, “Oh!”

She made no response, just stood there, gleaming in the summer sunlight, and I finally managed to say, a bit more comprehensibly, “Where did you come from?”

She didn’t answer, just ducked her head, the smallest flicker of a smile traveling across her mouth. Then she whirled so that her bright yellow skirt flew out behind her and disappeared once more into the woods.

“Wait!” I called after her, but she didn’t. And I stood for a long time, listening to her rustling retreat. I considered running after her into the dense stand of trees and seizing her arm to hold her back, but something—the unexpectedness of her arrival, perhaps, or maybe it was that richly glowing skin—frightened me just a bit, and so I did not.