The mountains never agreed on where to stand.
The Third Invitation
Elias had written the same invitation three times.
The first began: The tree is flowering. Come before the petals fall. By the time he found an envelope, the blossoms were already scattered across the path.
The second said: Come when the mist clears. The mountains look splendid. The mist stayed for three days, and Elias tucked the letter into a drawer.
Now the tree was flowering again. He sat by the window with a third sheet of paper and watched a petal settle on the stone step.
His sister Ruth lived in the next valley. They wrote often, but she still asked after the old gate he had replaced two winters earlier.
He dipped his pen.
Dear Ruth, the tree is flowering. I have a new gate.
He crossed out the sentence about the gate. It did not sound like much of an invitation.
Mountains in the Wrong Order
Perhaps Ruth would come if he sent clear directions. The path had changed since a fallen tree closed the old crossing.
Elias drew the mountains as he saw them from his window: a blue ridge in front, a white peak behind it, and a purple one farther away. He marked his house with a square and gave it a chimney. The smoke looked like a question mark.
He reached for his tea and found one of Ruth’s letters beneath the saucer. A brown ring marked its edge.
Inside was a sketch she had sent in autumn. She had drawn the view from her side of the valley, with the purple mountain closest and the blue ridge beyond it.
Elias compared the two pictures.
“That won’t do,” he said.
His instructions began, Walk past the blue ridge. From Ruth’s house, she would have to pass the purple mountain first.
He turned his drawing upside down. The mountains remained unhelpful, and the smoke fell out of the chimney.
A Letter on Its Way
Elias drew the route instead: the stone bridge, the bend with the broad tree, and the path to his gate. He added the lantern beside the first step, though he hoped Ruth would arrive before he needed to light it.
At the bottom he wrote: Come whenever the road is kind to you.
He folded the invitation with the map. On his way to the postbox, he nearly went back for the two earlier letters. Ruth might like to see how often he had thought of asking her.
Then he imagined her opening three invitations and trying to decide which tree, which season, and which gate he meant.
He left them in the drawer.
The View from the Porch
Several days later, Elias heard the gate latch. Ruth came up the path carrying his map and a box tied with string.
“The bridge was easy to find,” she said. “The tree at the bend was even easier. It has grown across half the road.”
“The gate is new,” Elias told her.
“I noticed. It works.”
They sat on the porch and opened the box. The cakes had shifted during the journey, leaving a trail of sugar along one side. Ruth chose the crooked one and gave Elias the largest.
A few blossoms had fallen, but the branch above them was still full. Across the valley, the mountains faded from blue to white to purple.
“The purple one was first,” Ruth said.
“It was last when I left,” Elias replied.
She looked at his map, then at the mountains. “It must have moved while I was on the road.”
Elias brushed a petal from her sleeve. “I’ll put that in the next directions.”
Livora Gracely ♥
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