myth for evening primrose

Ivy's thighs began to ache for the days he spent crouching over the ground, trying to solve what miracle would bring the dead soil of the Red Kingdom back to life. Nothing worked, and all the while the words the old grass man told him echoed in his thoughts.

He chose to ignore them, though, adding all kinds of chemicals and compounds, and all the water he could find to the recalcitrant soil, which responded with iron coldness. He began to see the dirt as an enemy.

And so it is with memories, the repetition of the old man's words entered another part of the young man's thoughts and manifested in the world around him. He kept smelling sweetness where there was none. One night, the world smell of one night, the world smelled of lemon and vanilla, and overwhelmed his dreams, waking him.

The moon hovered yellow on the horizon. All was touched with a shimmer, and there, in the weedy meadow, was a golden woman made of moonlight. She said she was looking for a fox, an old friend, but she would linger.

She was good at lingering, she added. They spent the evening walking, and she taught him about the moon, and water, and the nature of moonlight, how its solid sometimes, that water is woven by the moon, so every ocean gives a bit of itself to the moon in the night. When the light of morning touched the horizon, she began to fade, and shocked, she said to herself, I have spent my night with you, and shocked, she said, I have spent my night with you, and shocked, She said, “I have spent my night with you and forgot my companion, who I miss so much, I have been forgetting so much lately, and how I need his help now.”

When he grasped for her hand, it was not solid. She ran as she faded, and he tripped in his pursuit to ask her what her name was. But she was gone, and he fell asleep there on the meadow.

When he woke, where she had been, there was a tower of an evening primrose. He picked up a hefty root beside the plant. Was this an answer to the soil's wish?

A single flower faded on a trail of leaves like a shooting star. He felt in his pocket and took out the black vanilla pod.

He knew his desire now. Everything else, all labor and worry, fell away for the flood of his longing.