The sweetness in an apple

(STORY)

– Grandpa, please tell me one of your stories again. Can you make it nice, just like the last one?
– Sure I can, sweetie pie. I can make it just as sweet as you are. This time I am going to tell you a real story about apples and how sweet they can be. Listen?
There was once a woman with intentions of a kind substance, named Daria, who produced apples for a living and would sell them for little reward in a big mall, where she owned a cosy spot. The apples came from her own orchard, owned by her family for hundreds of years, planted with care in virgin soil, and watered with hopes of sweet yields, regardless of times of peace or war. All the efforts of many generations, which she ardently laid bare as the special fruit of what she represented, were simply labelled in the mall as ?bio?.

People passed by every day, some would stop to ask about the origin of their beauty, others admired with a fugitive smile, or ignored the spot, immersed in thoughts, while only a few were intent on taking her orchard?s benefits with them. One day a woman entered the store, a foreigner from distant shores, with hair proud and beauty undefined. Daria saw her interest and welcomed her with a lavish taste from her little world. The foreigner retorted she had no time then, but that she would return soon again. And return she did, with plenty of time and no money; she said she was short of means and hungry. The best apples of the day were served to satiate her; she even took some home, dashing off with a contented grin and a bucket full of autumn perfumes. She said she would come back again.

But time went on with neither sign nor sight of her. Until one time, when they briefly met by accident. Daria rejoiced and waved from a distance, but the lady?s eyes were deplete of warmth like cold crystals. ?Maybe she has other things on her mind? she thought, yet many months went by and the more their paths crossed in the same mall, the more the foreigner looked away indifferently, as though the apples had always been an inconvenient distress for the mall?s success. Daria just couldn?t comprehend the other view beyond the fence, but she let nature play its game of 3-dimensional array and waited for better days. And that day came, with the same lady tearing through the stores of the mall with a happy glow. ?Maybe now?s the time? she said swept up by the enthusiasm.

?Remember me??, ?What do you want??, ?Nothing, I just thought it?s nice to say hello, I didn?t mean to interrupt?, ?I see your intent and it?s been long, I know, but I have no time for sentimentalism, and am no longer in need of your apples? scenery. They all tasted sour to me?.

A strong swift blow on Daria?s soul, just as a white flag would be shot down by a black gun in the survival round: it was a moment of sheer truth passing through that fence she couldn?t understand before. The lady left never to return again, while Daria left too, there on the floor, the hope for that conceitedness to grow more roots of nothingness. She smiled, for she knew that the apples bore the secret of something powerful: they changed their taste, according to the breed of the lips biting their beauty: sometimes sweet, other times sour, even bitter, just like their owner?s seed.

The reason why the apples from such a populous mall were appealing only to certain type of souls ? the ones who were not there to take, but to give something in exchange, their kindness.
For every time anyone would take an apple from that place for the sake of feeling sweetness, the most they would get would be a taste of their own inner self. The apples are never to blame.

And as for me, there were times when apples were too rough or mushy to try, times I needed to fight to keep their taste right, but now, ever since I have you in my life, my sweetie pie, they all taste the same to me: innocent and sweet. Because everything precious and pure coming in our lives should be treated likewise.

The old man, once a visitor himself of the store of self-awareness from the story he had just said, bowed to kiss a tender forehead over a smile, replete with the sweetness of so many apples?in a dreamland.

(Soar, November, 2013. ? www.soaring-words.com, No liability over the picture. Picture credits: www.favim.com)