Ruby Moon

She wakes to the scent of baking bread, steaming raisins and melting sugar.  A butterfly bumps into her window, as soft as sunlight.  Sitting up, she rubs her feet like she always does.  Gets the blood moving.  She gets up, restless from the dream she had- a stifling, claustrophobic dream of honesty and labyrinths.  She wonders what to do with herself.  Today is just another rosy day, her mother would say.  She glides to the window, pretending she's Medea.  Her imagination is tragic like that.  Picking a cherry off the tree outside, she bites in to it.  The sour purple juice diffuses across her tongue, the sharpness puckering her lips.  They aren't ripe yet, she thinks.  Medea-ing her way back to her bookshelf she arranges the contents in height order, high to low, low to high.  Then alphabetically, like she did with her CDs.  An A.A. Milne story right the way down to her brother's discarded ZZ Top album.  She likes their beards. 

The ticking carriage clock on her dressing table invites her to dress and go downstairs, where she'll enter the mundane task of selling bread.  A bell tingles and her regular comes in.  She's taking the bread down before a word is spoken.  One white bloomer for the lonely boy at Number 28.  Wrapping it in red paper, she takes the coins- four silver, one bronze- and flashes him a glimpse of a glorious smile she saves only for him.  It warms his heart, but he can't show it.  He's the only one who knows that her favourite flower is cherry blossom.  Once, she found a sprig in the tip jar.