It was familiar. The bark welcomed Maxine back like it was an old friend draping a blanket over her shoulders as she sat down. The bark was soft here, cork-like from all the sitting she'd done here before. She wondered what had happened here that she had failed to write about. Was she capable of doing what Felix had done to her? What Maxine did remember was the way the tree had looked back in the winter. Barren branches holding strong against the snow heaped upon them. And in the fall, all its leaves were yellow and she had sat where she always did and she had worn her yellow sweater that matched the color of the leaves by coincidence and she had looked out at the meadow before her and thought of all the possibilities it presented. She had been so young. That's why the memories were so clear. She had imagined a horse bounding over the hill right up to the lone tree. It would probably whiny and then subtly bow towards her, clearly a gesture that she was welcome to ride away on the horse's back. In such a situation, she had imagined, she would stand, slowly approach the horse, pet it, try to feed it some gra** that she would pull from the lush ground (it's not like there was anything else in the vicinity she could offer). Now she tried to imagine. She looked at where the horizon took its downturn and she tried to picture a wild horse rounding the hill and galloping towards her. Of course, she could come up with the picture in her mind, but now it lacked emotion. Sapped of emotion, neigh, robbed of it, Maxine sat at the base of her tree. Who did she have to blame? No one, there was no one she could blame and so the blame fell to her, but was that right? It wasn't just. She looked up. During her younger years, there had been a robin's nest on one of the lower branches. She remembered it as clear as anything. Twigs meshed and bent together. The incessant squawking of the babies once they had hatched drove Maxine away from her tree for weeks. She didn't get to see them fly. They were gone when she came back. The branches were still too high to reach. There would never be any climbing of this tree done by humans. Only the bugs, birds, and squirrels were so privileged. All Maxine could do was look up and try to get a glimpse of sky through the thick foliage or look down. Gra**. Dirt. The occasional dandelion. Had she come here before now and after her last journal entry? There was no concrete way to know. Maybe she'd made this exact trek out here yesterday. Had she decided to be done with the journaling? Would every day from this point on be another day of internal debate and concluding not to write? No, she needed to solidify her memory again.