the magic hidden in ignorance

The light that filtered through the leafy canopy overhead danced across the forest floor as I picked my way through the trees, the distant rumble of thunder and the threat of rain pressing me on wards on my journey towards a giant oak that I had seen earlier from the train tracks near my home. The oak as well as being a hulking habitat for a variety of critters also housed the tree house my brother and I had found only days before and which at that moment held my silver locket that my mother had bought for my seventh birthday just a week prior. As the light grew weaker and the wind grew stronger it brought with it fat drops of rain that drenched my tiny body and chilled me to the bone as I then sprinted to the base of the oak and gripped the rope ladder in my chubby fingers and climbed into the tree house. Soaking from the rain huddled on the floor, my fear of being scolded by my mother for leaving my locket in such a place forgotten as lightening and thunder shook the very earth and the tree house with it as I filled the small room with hiccuping sobs and shivered clutching my locket to my chest. I was naive in thinking I was the only one caught in the storm, of course I heard the squirrels chattering and the birds chirping in fright as they waited the storm out but they were outside and therefore out of mind, so when a great black raven flew in the tiny window of the tree house to seek refuge from the rain I was non the less shocked. Even with my love of animals at that time I kept my distance and he kept his, the both of us in our own corners weary of the other, two souls so different from one another yet bound in the same fate. Our connection, however slight was broken when the rope ladder beneath us creaked and two of us froze in unison to wait helplessly for who ever was scaling the ladder to show themselves, as it happens the raven would have rather of faced the rain alone than the intruder together, when it took flight out the window in which it came. To my surprise it was not an intruder but my mother who finally climbed the ladder and found me, runny nose, tear stained cheeks and all she swept me up into her arms and together we wept clutching, at each other as we waited out the storm. I will never forget that day i spent in the old tree house, with its tiny window and tear soaked floor boards because it taught me that no matter how lost you are you can find strength in the ones you love.