“What’s the white thing in the woods down there?”
She looks out the kitchen sink window, over the white porcelain sink.
“Do you mean in the trees? I think it’s just a bag caught in the trees,” I proclaimed, referring to a small twisted white bag I had previously seen caught in our back yard.
“Yes.”
I looked down into woods, over the crispy brown grass. At first, nothing. I walked quietly, almost tiptoeing through the kitchen, passing the rows of windows.
One.
Two.
Nothing still. And then it came into sight.
I stopped.
“What is that?” I asked, although to myself as opposed to my mother who had by then walked to the refrigerator. A large figure of pure white sat upon a longer still sitting tree. At its top was a small face surrounded by the whiteness.
“I don’t know. You see it?”
Indeed, I saw it. The creature sat perfectly still, staring back in a creepy, unbroken glare. It was so far into the woods that I couldn’t see a single feature upon its tiny cream-colored face, but the only thing distinguishable was the pure white of its full-body burqa-like cloak.
“It looks like a little girl… mom, I think it’s a girl.”
“No, it’s not. It’s probably a bird. It’s not that big.”
“Yes, it is. It’s at least 3 feet tall, but it’s sitting on that fallen tree way down there. You can hardly see.”
I glanced down as mom walked away. The creature stared back. I went to get my shoes to investigate before taking one last glance out the window.
Gone.
The white figure had disappeared, leaving a brown and grey forest behind without a trace. I ran down to the woods in full sprint. Nothing. No birds sang, and not a sound resonated from the warming forest.
And with that, I began the walk back to the house, afraid to look behind me. Upon opening the door, my mother states,
“Well, it was probably a bird.”
