She waited.
He was preoccupied, she didn't push him. She knew the stories would come. All she had to do was to wait. And be there.
The silence between them stretched out into what could be considered an uncomfortable one. But between them, there was no discomfort. Their silences were not disquieting, just as their long-drawn talks were never tedious.
Soon enough, just as she knew he would, he started talking. Of his childhood friend.
"Her soft cheeks were a shade of pink that never failed to charm me. I would repeatedly rub my fingers over them, marvelling that such tenderness existed," he said, his eyes bright with remembered wonder. His dimples deepened, and she almost raised her hand to touch them but stopped just in time. She wanted to hear the story; it wouldn't do to distract him.
"Her hair was velvety green," he said, his smile becoming an impish grin.
She rolled her eyes. Was he pulling one over on her again? She peered at him, trying to make out if he was laughing at her. He held her gaze. Does it matter, she thought. If he was tricking her, they would laugh and squabble over it. If he wasn't, this one would fit into some of his most intriguing tales yet. One day, she thought, she would set them all in a book. Or better still, she would get him to write one. She didn't yet know how, but she knew that she would. Long-term planning had always been her forte.
He picked up the story again, sensing that she was ready. "All my free moments, I spent with her in the garden. Always in that same, favourite spot. I never tired of her," he described. A pang of envy hit her, and she averted her eyes lest he read her mind and stop telling the story.
He was still smiling. "Every evening, I bid her goodbye with such a heavy heart even though I knew she was the one constant in my life. That she'd be right there when I came back the next morning," he said. Even through her envy, she realised that he was describing something that was wonderful and precious. She hoped the story wouldn't have a sad ending. On the other hand, she also never wanted to meet this special childhood friend with the soft pink cheeks and the green hair, whatever that meant.
"Every night, when I went to bed, my eyes would inevitably be drawn to the open window which looked out on to the garden," he remembered. "And if it was a clear, moonlit night, I would see her silhouette there, as if painted against the sky. Now she was no longer my friend but a scary fiend, her hair spread out like menacing tentacles, waiting there to catch my eye and to perhaps haul me out the window into her bewitched life."
An involuntary shiver ran down her spine. What little girl was allowed to step out like that at night? Now, more than ever, she wanted this story to have an ordinary ending, even if it was 'And you must meet her, you know. You'll get along great with her!'
She held his hand, and he continued, "I'd often run out of the room, fear causing my legs to knot and trip myself up. My mother soon made it a habit of just keeping the window shut. And I preferred the sweltering, stifling heat to the scary sight of her at night."
"Why didn't your mother just tell her not to do that? To not scare you like that night after night?" she burst out, annoyed now that his mother hadn't protected him enough.
The laughter rippled out of him. She was perplexed but the ends of her lips curled up in an involuntary grin when she looked at his mirth-filled face.
Finally, he brought himself to some semblance of control.
"Why didn't my mom yell at her? Because, my darling, my friend was the musanda tree at the bottom of the garden," he said, dissolving into laughter again.
She was nonplussed for a moment, before she joined him. Peals of laughter rang out, his tinged with the slight sadness of a time when friends, of the human kind, were few; and hers, coloured by the realisation that after all, she had been wildly envious of a musanda tree!
