Oscar+and+Alphonse

=__Oscar and Linda__=

She knew it was time to send her back. The caterpillar wriggled softly in her hand, spelling out "goodbye." Linda bade her miniscule friend farewell and watched in grateful awe as she ascended in a powerful, radiant light, up endlessly into the universe, leaving Linda with nothing except vivid memories of her best three months ever. Slowly, she skulked back home following her matted trail through a field of four foot wheat grass.

As she wandered into the forest, passing by the stumps and secret hiding spots where Linda and Alphonse spent so much time together, she began reminiscing, dreaming of the wonderful times they had talking together, building forts, and just pretending they had other friends they were playing with. Linda was so deep in thought, blindly following her steps she so often wandered, she was home before she knew it. Ignoring her mother offering some lunch, she trodded up the creaky stairs, tripped over the loose floorboard and flopped down onto her final safe haven — her bed.

Linda, after spending a few minutes inert, shifted uncomfortably in her worn-in spring mattress, and reached for her notebook. Deciding it was the only way way to cope with her heartache, Linda began to write. After scirbble down her title "..." at the top of the dusty page, she recalled the first time she spotted Oscar, and recorded the past three months.

"She awoke on a common saturday. Linda opened her eyes, flooding them with warm, early country sun. She took a cold shower, dressed herself in an old, beat-up yellow plaid dress with a frilly bow at the collar, and left by 7:45 for her daily journey through the forest. After passing by the giant red oak tree with initials carved in it all the way up the trunk, and spending a quiet seven minutes on the small stump next to the sleeping owl, she stumbled across the first thing out of the ordinary in years. Right beside a young tree with poison ivy growing up the side, an enormous groundhog hole was dug out fresh. However, the oddity was a bright glowing light originating from deep within the hole,” Linda wrote as her memories came back to her.

She continued, “Overtaken by curiosity, Linda knelt down delicately beside the groundhog hole. Slowly she bent over it peering down inside, and saw what looked like one of those colorful, tickly caterpillars inside; however, there didn’t seem to be any source for the light – as if it were simply, there. Linda reached in and pulled out the caterpillar and immediately upon touch him, the light was somehow extinguished and mild sunlight slowly poured into the hole. The caterpillar kindly agreed to come out of the hole and into Linda’s presence. Noticing her dumbfounded expression, the caterpillar crawled around her palm and spelled out a kind ‘hello.’ Shocked, Linda was unable to reply and the caterpillar didn’t miss a beat before stretching down her arm to tell Linda his name, Oscar. Fighting the urge to violently return Oscar to the hole and run home, Linda overcame her sudden inability to talk, telling Oscar ‘M-my n-name’s L-lin-linda,’ and received a tiny, yet exceptionally warm smile. Linda then awkwardly waddled back to the stump next to the owl to sit and talk with Oscar,” finally hitting a bump as to what exactly the conversation consisted of, Linda decided to go down to have some lunch.

Linda’s mom pulled a pot of stew off the fire and served a portion for herself and for Linda. They sat down and Linda’s mom tried desperately to find out what she was doing, however Linda never told her mom about her majestic caterpillar friend, or the awesome times they spent together. She was positive her mom wouldn’t understand, and simply begin condescendingly questioning her. Immediately after finishing the stew, Linda threw her bowl into the sink, dashed up the unpadded staircase, over the loose floorboard, leapt onto her bed and began to adamantly continue her story very rapidly.

“After trudging through the first difficult eight minutes of introductions, the two became very accustomed to each other and able to hold steady conversation. Unable to speak, however, Oscar’s need to spell out everything made the conversation go extremely slow. Despite her burning desire, Linda resisted asking who (or what, for that matter) Oscar was.

“Eventually they both got sick of the stump and the owl who continued to irregularly hoot in his sleep. Oscar suggested (extremely slowly) that they construct their own personal fort. Linda wasn’t very accepting to this idea, as she wasn’t too fond of physical labor. On the other hand, it turned out that was Oscar’s plan – he flipped straight out of Linda’s hand and bolted straight to the barest strong tree in the forest. He flew around the top of the tree a number of times, repeatedly releasing colorful lights as a blurry box appeared about the trunk. Oscar dropped straight to the base of the tree, returned to Linda’s hand, and looked excitedly back up at the mysterious blurred box. As Linda’s exasperated expression moved away to make room for a look of complete confusion, the blurred box finally took shape. It immediately burst into a typical tree house – oak boards, a rope ladder, two windows, a trap door, and a small balcony with a railing. Unable to think of anything else, Linda swiftly fisted her hand holding Oscar and sprinted for the rope ladder. After checking to make sure the ladder was sturdy she wobbled up with one arm, the other holding tightly on to Oscar,” after this, Linda decided to head for the tree house.

Linda climbed the sturdy rope ladder and laid down on her favorite mattress and stared sadly at the small little pouch Oscar sat in when they spent hours endlessly talking in their tree house. She sat up and began to write again, now that she could literally see the inside of their tree house.

“Inside the tree house Linda found a dull gray mattress aside a small coffee table with a lamp and similarly dull pouch, seemingly meant for Oscar to reside in. The walls were a plain oak wood color, with more dull gray horizontal stripes lining throughout. As dull as it was, Linda was in absolute delight; she knew she would never find a better place to spend time, and no one better to spend it with.”