Caught | But I Smile Anyway...

Sue’s #WritePhoto Prompt this week:

sun caught in trees

“Hello?”
Julie looked up. Where had that voice come from? She was sure no one else was in the forest with her. Settling back down, onto her log seat, she continued to read.
“Helloooo!!”
Again, Julie glanced up.
It would be just typical. She had finally found one place she could come to, to get away from the constant demands of motherhood, a refuge, where she could read in peace, and now she’d been found.
Still, there was no one there.
“Oh dahling, it’s not that easy to miss me! Up here!” The voice beckoned her to look upwards. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she allowed them to come into focus again.
“Oh do hurry up, I don’t have long! I have but a few minutes when the sun shines in the right place, with no clouds, to be able to see, and usually, there isn’t anyone around!”
Julie gasped as she realised what she was seeing.
There was a tree, a rather tall tree, waving at her, it seemed, ‘hip’ pushed to the side in a rather camp fashion, and the sun was blazing through a circular gap, as if caught, creating the illusion of a single eye.
“Oh, wonderful! You can see me!”
“Yo-you can talk?” Julie stammered. Her first instinct was to run away, but the eye was captivating.
“Well, of course I can. So can the others, It’s just I’m the only one who was blessed, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with the ability to communicate with other species. All seeing eye, and all that, but the damned thing only works for the time the sun is in the right position to shine through my eye, so to speak.”
“Well I never….” This was like something out of the Magic Faraway Tree, her favourite ok as a child. She was half expecting to see a bunch of brownies and goblins appear at the branches.
“I know what you’re thinking, and it’s all a load of nonsense.”
“Pardon?”
“Fairy Folk. I mean come on, as if that could be a real thing! It’s bad enough having the animals constantly climbing up us, do you think we’d really welcome being hollowed out and lived in? Miniature people with wings, dear Lord, that would just be ridic-”
The voice cut off as the sun made it’s way through the sky, leaving the tree’s ‘eye-hole’.
Julie rubbed her eyes and looked up at the tree again. “Er, hello?”
No answer.
Had she imagined it? Who knows, but as she picked up her book and bag, and made to leave, she glanced back at the tree, and she could have sworn it waved at her.