I walked up to the veranda and sat beside her.
I didn’t look at her face. I simply sat there and stared straight ahead.
The scenery I’d seen from outside the dwelling—
and the scenery seen while sitting on the veranda were somehow different.
Watching it, I dimly realized:
‘It was made by design.’
The view I was seeing—
someone had created it in hopes that someone would sit here.
The tended trees and garden. The roughly made pond with carp of many colors within.
From this very seat, the waterwheel framed just so, and the stream flowing around it.
Everything was a single painted tableau.
And—
‘made to look beautiful from exactly here.’
That was how it had been arranged.
So that the viewer would feel peace—and abundance.
It had been cultivated with that thought in mind.
The warmth of that heart was especially palpable in this scene.
Fwoooosh.
The wind blew. Hair fluttered, leaves following it, fading into the air.
Following them with my eyes, my gaze naturally lifted to the sky.
A light veil of cloud hung over the sun setting in the dusk.
As I quietly watched, I realized one more thing.
‘Nothing moves.’
Not…