Livora Gracely

That looks oddly familiar.

The Visitor

The crocodile first noticed the visitor on a bench beside the river.

It was small, dark green, and covered in a most respectable arrangement of scales. It also sat very straight, as if it had been waiting for someone important.

The crocodile looked behind him. There was no one else on the path.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

The visitor did not reply.

Perhaps it had not heard him over the water. He climbed onto the bank, shook a little mud from his feet, and tried again.

“Good afternoon.”

One of the visitor’s handles slowly fell to the side.

“Ah,” said the crocodile. “Good afternoon to you too.”

He sat down on the grass. He had not expected company.

No Answer

He described a fish that had escaped him that morning, its size increasing with each sentence.

The visitor listened without interruption.

Encouraged, he began a story about a heron and a sandwich. Halfway through, he noticed that the visitor had no eyes.

He moved closer. There was a clasp where a mouth might have been, and the handle lay across its back like a very thin tail. He examined his own foreleg, then the pattern on the visitor’s side.

Familiar, certainly. But the visitor had no feet, either, and had remained perfectly still through the most exciting part of the sandwich story.

A breeze lifted the handle. The crocodile waited. It dropped again.

He tried lifting his own arm and letting it fall. The resemblance was not as satisfying as he had hoped.

“Right,” he said.

He sat for a while longer, looking at the bag on the bench and then at the scales on his arm. He put his arm behind his back. After a moment, he brought it forward again.

The Owner

A woman appeared at the bend in the path, patting her coat pockets as she walked. She stopped when she saw the crocodile beside the bench.

“My bag!” she said.

The crocodile stepped away and pointed to it. The woman approached carefully, picked up the bag, and checked inside. A little notebook, a pair of glasses, and an orange were still there.

“Thank goodness. I thought I’d left it on the bus.”

She tucked the bag under her arm. The crocodile glanced at its patterned side and then at his own arm. The woman followed his gaze. For a moment, she held the bag in front of her, turning it slightly.

“Oh,” she said.

She took a scarf from her pocket and wrapped it around the bag. A corner of green still showed beneath the knot.

The crocodile looked at the knot. It was rather crooked.

“I’m not very good at those,” the woman said.

His own knots tended to come undone when admired.

A Voice Behind Him

The woman thanked him again and continued along the path, holding her scarf-wrapped bag close. The crocodile watched until she disappeared around the bend.

“There you are!” called a voice from the river.

Another crocodile was swimming towards the bank, a fish held carefully in his mouth. He set it down and looked at the empty bench.

“Were you talking to someone?”

“I thought I was.”

His friend climbed onto the grass and offered him half the fish. As they ate, the crocodile began his story about the heron and the sandwich again.

This time, he was interrupted before the sandwich even appeared.

“Was it the heron with the red hat?”

“You know him?”

“I know the sandwich.”

The crocodile shifted over to make room, and his friend settled beside him to explain.