The Story on the Vase

The fine haired tip
Touches Indian ink,
Allowing the final illustrations
To be perfectly made
In the young girls potted story.
It ends with love,
As it so began,
A tale of cruel, twisted fate
That led to the bliss of two.

The author's charges were
Aella and Ari,
The Little wave and the Lion,
Spirits whose differences
Were quite openly named.
Ari was brave, boastful, and proud
Exclaiming his magnificence
Whenever his feet touched soil.
Aella, so sweet,
Was ever encouraging others
Saying forever how she could never
Be special herself.
He, frought with muscles and gleaming green eyes.
She, cursed with normalcy in dark brown and light blue.
But through their differences,
One confidence remained:
They, both being twenty moons,
And indebted to tribes,
Were married to others,
A cheif and a woman
Who held their attentions
With children and responsibilities.

Oh, It seems as though the characters are
Ne'er meant to be
Then, one day they met
By the edge of the stream
While wrangling strings
Filled with gleaming pink salmon.
At first glance,
There was but a gleam of acknowledgement
A subtle knowing that the other was there.
They, being peaceful both,
Tolerated each catch,
And silently bid farewell,
With no other thoughts.

A full phase of the moon,
And the two meet again
Betwixt the dark branches
Of the forest's limbs.
Ari was on the hunt,
Searching for deer,
His feet quick,
But his eyes and ears quicker.
But Aella, poor soul,
Was not there for an ordered purpose,
But to find escape
From the tragedy in her tribe;
A great plague,
One of fever and spots,
Claimed the life of her only child,
And though her husband lay his sadness at the burial ground
She did not find it fitting
To bury her tears anywhere but
With the spirits in the trees.

Ari heard her cries,
A maid's deep mourning melody
And found he was drawn to her song
Like a bee to flowers.
He stopped his chase,
An un Ari-like thing,
And spied from the backside of an oak
As Aella's eyes flowed.
He watched until the pastels from the suns decline
Smeared themselves with the moon's rising path.
Only after this long period did he make himself known;
With one swift move,
A hand was on her shoulder,
And another with an arm
Was wrapped around her waist.
For the entire night
The stars watched this scene
Him holding her
The relative strangers
In a comforting place.

The morning came;
An evil blessing
For Aella found herself not wanting to return home
And Ari found himself wanting to take her away.
So with not one word spoken
They agreed to a walk
And ventured together into
Unexplored areas of wood.
By midday,
With still nothing said,
They camped on a maple log,
And returned to their embrace of the night.
But this time when Aella began her sad song again
Ari hushed her tune
With a strong, tender kiss
And they both looked at each other
For the first real time,
Their green and blue irises
Mimicking the sea.
Then, out of necessity for passion
And a need for physical releif,
They made love in the moss and leaves
And became the lovers
It was written for them to be.

That night,
After they retraced their steps,
They said a fond farewell,
Too fond for the lives they were supposed to be leading,
And their bodies went to their seperate homes;
Ari, back to his tribe,
Where all were worried where he was.
Aella, back to her tribe,
Where everyone was more worried about the growing numbers
Of fever and death.
Their minds, however, were forever entwined,
And thereafter their thoughts were only of each other.

A year went by,
With no sight between the two,
But with an ever growing hope
That they would meet again.
Ari, changed from a roar to a purr,
Was made medicine man
By special request.
He vowed to find a cure for the fevered disease
That had caused his love
Much suffering and pain.
He spent hours each day
Studying pollen and stems
Combining toad slime with roots
To get a favored reaction.
Aella, now changed from a mouse to a leader,
As her husband had caught the same fatal disease,
And died two months
After her precious daughter.
Now she led the tribe
In her chief husband's place
Trying her best to comfort those
Who had lost family
Like her love had comforted her
A long time ago.
For that whole, awful year,
Their changed responsibilities
Brought them closer together,
As each one tried to be the person
That the other one was.

A whole year went by;
The fevers subsided
And Aella found herself free for a day.
By chance,
Or perhaps by womanly instinct
She found herself walking through the same forest
Where Ari had held her months before.
She stared at the trees,
The ones she had prayed to
To give her spirit something to live for
And her thoughts went back to his loving embrace.
Maybe it was this thought,
Or a year's worth of the same,
That sent her in the direction
She knew Ari's tribe to be.
Like a newly blown seed,
She swayed with the wind,
And fantasized about what her love was like now.
She hoped with her heart's might
That he craved her as well,
And that his mind had not shoved
Their shared memory away.

Aella's heart beat quickened
As the tribal drums sounded,
And she knew she had found the group.
Glee and fear pulsed through her veins
As she made herself known
To the feather-heavy gaurds.

The elders of Ari's tribe
Sick with the same fever the Aella's tribe suffered
Watched with great suspicion
As Aella explained she was looking for a childhood friend,
And asked if she could search this tribe to try and find him.
With a gentle mistrust, they agreed to her plea,
And asked what the name of her friend was.
And just when she thought that her plan had worked,
Aella realized that she never knew;
Through that long embrace,
Their walk, and their love,
They had never said a word.
To her, Ari was always just love,
A pure emotion in her that needed no name.
Her flesh ran red with shame,
When she admitted that she did not know what he was called
And in the gentle fashion she was taught,
Excused herself from her embarassment.

The whole way back,
She chided and cried.
She would never see her love again.
Would never feel the caress
Of his comforting hands.
What a fool was she
That she did not get his name!

But luck again was on her side,
Or perhaps it was the stars eager to see the love progress,
For as she came to the edge of the wood,
She saw a sight that she had longed for
For an entire year;
Ari, under a tree,
Hugging his knees to his chest,
And whole heartedly crying
Over the nighttime passing of his wife from the fever,
But moreso for the fact that
He had not been able to cure it.
Now, Ari thought, there was no chance to
Be hero for his love,
And he could never see her again.
Aella watched his tears,
And listened to his song,
Transfixed in his husky melody.
Then, after a long while,
When the birds had long since laid down in the nest,
Aella stepped out from behind the oak,
And in one sudden move,
Had one hand on his shoulder,
And one hand with an arm around his waist.
He looked up into her eyes,
In an instant knowing what was happening,
Yet refusing to believe the mirage without solid proof,
Stood, and took her in his arms,
And kissed her like he had one year ago.
They stood there for a lifetime,
Love radiating from their eyes,
Until Aella finally broke the silence:
"Love," she said
"my name is Aella."
"Love," he said
"my name is Ari."