I woke this morning greatly amused by my dream self.
I’d been strolling through my neighborhood and there was this dried up looking lawn with this lanky, mostly bare bush on it. It looked a bit like a honeysuckle, but had an odd shape to it, gnarled double trunk spreading to a bushy bit, then one loppy branch angling out towards the street. I’d noticed it before(wierd dream logic that, referencing a memory that never existed) and had found it enchantingly birdlike.
I felt sad. It seemed likely to die in the summer heat. I wished there was some way I could transplant it to my yard without antagonizing the neighbor who owned the place.
It happened, on my walk that day, that I was carrying a fruit. A strange fruit, large as a grapefruit, but brick red, solid and pulpy.
On a whim, I held it out to the ‘head’ of the bird bush. I was caught by my action and felt a frisson of intense awareness. I held very, very still, my hand continuing to offer the fruit. Some small part of my mind nattered at me, wondering what the heck I was doing, glad that the fence was blocking the view from the window, relieved that the woman who lived there would not see me behaving like such a fruitloop with her shrubbery.
It shut up-indeed, vanished completely-when the branch began to move. Towards my hand, slowly, slowly..
I backed up. I wasn’t afraid, I knew what I was doing. I stepped back about four feet and again held out the fruit.
The branch extended as far as it could and then, well, I could feel the bush coming to a decision. Carefully and deliberately, the roots pulled themselves up from the crusty lawn and the creature stepped forward, it’s trunks separating into two ostrich like legs.
It came to me, sniffing at the fruit with a beaklike protrusion and then lipping at it like a horse might. I let it take a nibble and then began to lead my new friend the ostrich bush, home.
