The Kingdom

The sun had the resemblance of a giant yellow octopus hanging in the opalescent ocean sky. Its endless unfolding tentacle rays dangling, drooping so low they almost seemed to coil on the ground below in a pile - inviting a kind of sad warmth should one be able to wrestle himself inside one of its spiraled reticent limbs.

Polly preferred the shade underneath her favorite apple tree, ensconced in a foggy gray shadow that danced around her when the breeze fluttered, reclining against the tree's sturdy trunk, waiting for a perfect terse apple to fall and catch in the pouch of her skirt. She had been waiting for ten years, filled with a somber excitement.


Jimmy was less hopeful, staring at the murky bubbly film that had stubbornly cemented itself over the surface of the lake some time before the last apple had fallen into Polly's lap. Jimmy was in Polly's sight line, but she never saw him. Jimmy never saw Polly either but he could hear the soft moans of disappointment that wilted out of her every time the sun closed its eyes and dimmed its light.


Paul was the only one who ever really moved - leaving the cloisters of his ivy-covered house to rove about in the tall, slender grass fields of the Kingdom. Though he was more active than most he was also the most abject - scowling always, never placid or stoic like the others were. He silently and mentally encouraged the others' abeyance though, as he preferred not to be disturbed during his daily wanderings. He believed his soundless denunciations of their possible mobility (for he wasn't sure if they even could move) was what kept them idle. And he was grateful for his power - for he would have hated to share his towering expanse of greenery with the others.