I know I posted this last year but I like this story and there are a few amongst you who may not have seen it.  So, sorry and enjoy!

Lea looked around her and smiled.  Life was good.  She felt as if she was on top of the world.  Which in fact, was not too far from the truth.  She was high enough to look down on the teeming masses and feel superior.

A gentle breeze moved around her and she shivered in delight.  With the sun on her face and the faintest wafts of air to keep the bugs at bay, there was no other place Lea would have preferred to be. Here she could while away the days in thought and feeling.  The whole experience was a hedonistic surplus of sensation.

It is dangerous to spend all of one’s time in the near-sighted pursuit of just one ideal.  With the passage of time comes change.

Lea woke one morning to a strange feeling of fear.  She really didn’t understand the sensation but she was sure she didn’t like it.  Carefully she glanced around her.  Everything seemed unchanged.  The people she could see were scurrying about their daily lives. The sun was in the sky, the wind was quiet but still there.  It had rained over the last few days but that was not unusual and it even made the world seem a little crisper, more alive.  But something was different.

Lea didn’t live in her little aerie alone, she had neighbours.  When she finally deigned to actually acknowledge them, she discovered that they had changed.  Perhaps they had spent too much time in the sun because they were definitely a different colour.  Not an unpleasant shade of red but it did depend on your tastes.  Once again Lea felt superior.  She wasn’t going to change, not her.

There are few inevitabilities in life, death and taxes not withstanding.  The passage of time can never be halted no matter how much we may want it to and with that passage also comes change.  We can rail against it all we want but change happens.

It had been a few weeks since Lea had first noticed the changes in her neighbours and she was horrified to see that they seemed to have accepted it.  It must be because they were old, past their prime.  Not like her.  Although, in the last few weeks she had been feeling a little tired, not her usual perky self.  It must be the weather.  The wind was blowing a little harder and the sun wasn’t nearly as warm as it had been.  Lea was sure that it would all pass and that one day soon everything would be back to normal.  It had to; she wouldn’t accept anything else.

The next day Lea woke feeling cold and sore.   She made the effort to look around her and noticed that all of her neighbours had gone.  She was alone.  The people below were fewer and those she could see were not enjoying the day like they used to, they seemed to be in a hurry.  It is hard to feel sanctimonious when you are alone.

A few days later Lea did not wake up.  The wind was blowing hard and crisp. The sun seemed lower in the sky, almost as if it too was finding it difficult to rise in the morning.  The warm days of summer had come to an end and the cool winds of change had brought the autumn.  With her many neighbours Lea now formed a blanket of leaves beneath her cherished trees.  The season had changed once more.

-the end-