If you see a tiny door...

The tiny door was not seen unless you crouched so low to the ground your nose scraped the hard pavement stones. Then you might see it. But, if you saw it, you were sure to think you were imagining it. For a door under the deep roots of a large sequoia was an impossible thing to be true and more likely a tale started by some bored youth exaggerated further as it was passed on, embellished by each person lying it forward.

That is exactly what Forsyth believed of the story he’d heard as he walked through the national forest picking up the trash with his pointed stick, as he was paid to do, grumbling on about the piggy tourists that dropped trash everywhere, with no consideration for the nature they were supposed to be revering.

“No consideration at all. You’d think they were walking through a dump the way they toss their nasty, snotty tissues all over the ground,” Forsyth grumbled loudly spying one such crumbled tissue, sticking out from under the root of a beautiful Sequoia.

“Sorry my lady,” he said to the magnificent tree nodding his head as he continued to grouse, “These no accounts, hiking for the appearance of being nature lovers, when they are nothing but imposters. Better served in a ratty pub then here missing the point of viewing the wonders of this land.” He shook his head as he bowed lower and stuck the point of his stick under the root, trying to stab the tissue but he could not stick it.

He sighed as he got down on his knees and lowered himself to the ground, low enough to scrape his nose on the stone pavement as he slipped the stick along the ground and into the tissue and this time he stuck it good.

He moved the stick with the skewered tissue back to his side but he did not stand up.

He lay there with eyes wide open in disbelief, staring at the tiniest door in the underbelly of the tree’s root. He stared and he stared, thinking he must have lost consciousness getting down so low to the ground, but he still did not move to stand up. He did not trust his eyes but could not deny them the fantasy of what they were seeing.

When the tiny door swung open his breath logged in this throat, and from the darkness beyond that door a tiny creature appeared with long ears, sharp eyes and wearing a vest and trousers. He thought he must have fallen asleep and was lost now in dreamland.

When the creature produced a walking stick and walked up to his hand and tapped his wrist, he assured himself he did not feel a thing. When it demanded he remove himself from his path so he could walk through, he assured himself he had not heard a thing.

“Oh bother me,” the creature sighed, “Another large impraticle being blocking my path.” He squinted over his tiny spectacles at the large face of it and said, “Move please, or I shall have to move you myself and I promise you will not like it,” he said truthfully to it. When it continued to stare stupidly at him the creature pointed his walking stick at it and said,” Feather light ye be and feather light ye fly away.”

And the big large thing no longer blocked his path, for it was flying above the tree tops going hither to and fro by the decision of the wind.

The creature smiled and looked at his watch glad to see he was not going to be late but his better self sent guilt to his brain and said, he had to consider the fate of the big thing flying haphazardly above the tree tops.

“Oh very well,” the creature sighed giving in to his better self and pointed his cane to the sky and said,” Big and heavy you be again, but fall where you can not find me, and know what thou has seen today is but a figment of your own imagination, if you pass it on.” Then the creature smiled and toddled on his way as the big thing flew down from the sky and landed in a heap of trash.

Forsyth scrambled from the pile of dirty food containers and blessed himself.

What manner of dream had he just had?

He spied a group of tourists walking towards him and stopped them to tell of his strange sighting of a tiny door that he knew was but a dream, but a dream that had flown him above the trees and tossed him in the trash, so how can that be?

The tourists laughed and walked away but each would tell another of the tiny door in the tree story they had heard that day, and it would pass, and it would pass, on and on, until another big thing found its way to the doormat of the door under the root of a magnificent Sequoia where the tiny creature dwelled.