She sat on the wooded side of the bubbling stream in a bed of pine needles, leaning up against a tall pine and rolling a needle in between her fingers.
Alone in her thoughts, she felt the soft breeze as it reached her from the meadow across the stream. She enjoyed seeing the grasses painted by the invisible brush of the breeze.
Her attention was suddenly drawn to movement at the top of the hill, next to the unclouded sky: first, graceful movements, and then, to her great pleasure, she realized it was a woman, alone in thought, dragging her wide-brimmed hat through the grasses as she walked leisurely down the hill to the huge, old oak with the swing.
She didn't see the woman sitting by the pine tree, sitting taller now and frozen as her eyes followed this unsuspecting woman slowly coming down the hill to what was, evidently, her special and secret retreat. Even though the stream was between them, and the tree a fair distance away, the voyeur held her breath, as if breathing would give her away. She sat still and watched as the woman approached the tree...touching it as she would touch a lover....intimately....knowingly....as if she and the tree shared many secrets.
Suddenly, the woman watching wanted to discover what those secrets were...who this woman was....what was on the other side of that hill...what made this haven hers....what was actually under that dress....what did she smell like...and continued - almost guiltily - watching as the woman with the flowing hair and thin dress sat on the porch swing which hung heavily from the massive oak, shading her pale skin from the summer sun.
