It was a hot late summer night, with the last of the daylight fading and the sky taking on the red colour of dusk. The boy walked into the back garden of his friend's house to a secluded patch of the garden, away from the party and the happy crowd of people - his friends.
He sought a private place and when he found it he sat down, cross legged, next to a small wild patch of grass.
He had been there a little while, with the muffled sound of the party drifting overhead, when a gentle voice interrupted his privacy. - ‘What are you up to?’, said the woman behind him. It was his friends wife. She was a little older than the boy, quietly beautiful, with kind eyes. ‘I thought I hadn't seen you in a wee while. I thought perhaps you'd gone home without telling me.’
The boy leant back on his hands so he could see her. ‘No...I wouldn't do that’, he said.
‘Come back inside...There's a party going on you known’. Her voice was like a big smile, and she was hard to say no to.
‘Okay, but wait a minute.’
The boy, still sitting cross legged, pulled up a handful of grass and rubbed it hard between the palms of his hands until it was crushed and his hands stained earth green. - Then with his hands still clasped together, he blew between his fingers several times.
The wife drew closer to the boy and crouched down by his shoulder to see what he was doing. Quiet clearly from between his fingers tiny sparks began to rise in the air, as if the boy had kindled a small fire in his clasped hands. With the evening drawing in, the sparks were clear to she, dancing f in the air light small firefly over a pond.
‘Now’ said the boy ‘it may seem a little peculiar, but I want you to think of something that is your favourite colour….don't tell me what it is, just hold the colour in your head for a little while.’
‘Okay’, she said. ‘You're a little odd sometimes, you know that, right?’
‘Yeah, I know it’ said the boy with a little smile, ‘ but make sure it's your very favourite colour’.
‘Okay’, she said again, but this time she closed her eyes when she said it and had a look of concentration on her gentle face.
‘Got it!’ said the boy with a surprising sound of triumph.
With one hand tightly clamped around the mashed up remains of the grass, with the other he dug a small hole in the earth. Then, he opened his hand and blew the grass remands. As he did sparks and ash blew from his hand into the shallow hole he had just dug, and he quickly recovered it.
‘Finished?’ asked his friend’s wife. ‘Finished!’ replied the boy.
‘Good’ she said with a quiet affection ‘there's a party I want you to go to, and it's not to far from the end of my garden.’ She held out her hand, he took and walked back into the house together.
The following spring, when the events of the last summer were a distant memory, a flower bloomed in a quiet part of the garden. Like the woman who lived there, the flower was unique and it was indeed her favourite colour.