House & Home

 As I sat there, taking the photos below, there was no sound; just complete silence, except when a crow called from somewhere in the trees and took off into the sky, only heard by the flutter of its wings and the branches that then threw snow to the ground. It was wonderful to hear absolutely nothing, and watch the forest slowly grow dark around me and the snowflakes softly and peacefully fall over it. It was like stepping through a door and into Narnia.

    If I listened very closely, I could hear the candle sizzle when a tiny snowflake was caught by the flame.

 

The neighbours of the house in the drawing could not tell you much about the old man lives who there. He has very few visitors, but the few who come are dressed nicely, in suits, ties, dresses-- and they come in limos and black cars. Sometimes they hear music drift from the house, the faintest notes played lovingly by a pianist at his piano, and the young children, outside past their bedtime, can hear it long into the darkening night, experimenting and changing like a thought. 

Sometimes the old man will leave the house for weeks, and return without anyone noticing, his arrival only marked by a few lit windows at night. He doesn't take much care of the house- the lawn is overgrown with grass and forest ferns, and the trees begin to claim back his yard-- but the children can tell you about all the times he had climbed to the roof, to the distress of every adult watching, on a ladder to carefully fix his weathervane after every storm. 

 

 

Sometimes he throws birdseed around the yard, and the crows come and gather on the roof and on the lawn. Eventually they learn from his mild manners that he means no harm, and will gather right up to his feet, moving only so that he can return to his door. The children start to call him a wizard after that. 

He even took in a stray cat; it was tattered and brown, and it wouldn't let anyone but the old man touch it. The only thing that changes about the house is the crows migrating for the winter, and the cat that would spend those colder days sitting at one of the windows of the house. As seasons go by, the house becomes surrounded by the forest, so that it gets harder to see through the trees, and the crows gather in the branches and the cat lurks underneath them, and the important people still come to visit, though they never stay long. The music still drifts through the forest on some evenings, though the glow of the windows is hard to see through the trees.

And that is all the neighbours could tell you about the old man who lives in that house.