Chapter 1: 26th of June 2012
He pulled the pepper seeds off the tree, crushed them. A gust pulled the scent into the air as he raised his hand to his face; she stood still motionless.
“I never knew pepper grew on trees,” he admitted and quizzically continued, “mixed peppercorns, unroasted.”
“You do know where pecan nuts come from?” she quietly quipped at him.
They stood still in the cold frosted baking sun of winter where the honoured dead memorial peered at them. He took her hand, darted across the road and found himself almost too close for his own needs. The soft sun still baking allowed them nothing but emptiness and yearning and an evening of mystique – long forgotten in reveries of youthful stupidity. Long remembered hours of elder reminiscence and abject emotional poverty and moving modalities encountered all on a disputed day years gone by.
He swung to and fro, to and fro, to and fro from the chains of the swinging swing where he smoked and learnt her and watched the to and fro of destiny intertwine their to fro. She was a mere child, nineteen turning twenty and gentle yet firm. Long auburn hair tainted with roasted hazelnut and green coral-reef Caribbean fatherless eyes – no doubt this would play its part in becoming the to and fro of an empty tale.
“My Haydn is important to me but I know you will learn from it,” he muttered via a text message. Fundamentally, this education, a pillar of their relationship was erected under the incorrect guise of an ethos that would mold them and leave him swinging.
“You don’t have to,” she replied, “I can just photocopy it at varsity…”
“Then how will I see you again?” he stupidly asked.
“You will have to take me on another date.” Her straightforwardness towards his stupidity allowed him to recoil in erotic fallacies. He continued to mangle the keys of the piano as he awaited her reply, awaited her reply.
They began dating on that day, when everything was baking and frosted and still it was disputed whether or not it was that day, the tit for tat and tat for tit swinging passed by with the gentle breeze under the pepper tree.
