Fiction: Waiting For Joy

This month's Words for Wednesday is hosted by Elephant's Child. This week's prompts are: Bird, Lifetime, Impossible, Days, Dreams, Meet And/or Spider, Thread, Secret, Thing, Author, Recesses. Visit Elephant's Child for more takes on the prompts over here.

Fiction: Waiting For Joy
On a cloudy day, as light rain falls, a bunny, carrying a straw umbrella, appears in a small forest. From here and there, he picks some dried leaves and lays them on the ground under a willow tree and sits down. Then he turns his eyes up toward the sky.
    A squirrel, on her way home, spots the bunny sitting there. She runs toward him and says,"What are you doing, bunny?"
    The bunny peers down at the squirrel, smiles and replies, "I'm waiting." He turns his stare back up at the sky.
    The squirrel, curious at what the bunny meant, moves closer and asks, "May I wait with you?"
    "Yes. You may share my umbrella," says the bunny. After the squirrel sits down beside him, he shifts his umbrella a little to the right toward the squirrel. Then he returns his gaze toward the sky. The squirrel turns her gaze upward as well.
    As the rain continues with their light dripping, a pair of black birds comes drifting down and lands on a branch of a nearby tree. They look at the bunny and the squirrel and then at each other. One of them asks the squirrel, "What are you two doing?"
    The squirrel replies without taking her eyes away from the sky, "We're waiting."
    The black birds looks at each other again and shrugs. They make themselves comfortable on the tree branch and let the leaves shield them from the rain. And then they too, stare in the same direction as the bunny and the squirrel.
    A family of three spiders appear. The largest spider, Papa Spider, crawls up the tree and asks the birds, "What are you all doing?"
    One of the black birds reply, "We're waiting."
    "For what?" Papa Spider wonders.
    Both birds shrug. "We do not know."
    Paper Spider crawls back down the tree towards his family and says, "It seems they are waiting but they don't know what. Let's vote whether to stay and wait or go on our vacation. I vote stay." He holds up a leg. Mama Spider holds up a leg and Baby Spider, perched on Mama Spider's back, holds up a little leg as well. Papa Spider leads his family up another tree where they will not be stepped on and they too, take up to gazing at the sky.
     Soon the rain subsides and the clouds part. The bunny stands up, closes his umbrella and shakes the raindrops from it. "The wait is almost over," he says. He stretches his arms and legs. The squirrel does the same thing. She is glad though she still have no idea what they are waiting for but at least it is almost over.
    The black birds flies closer and hovers above the bunny and the squirrel. There is a certain silence. Bright afternoon sunlight falls around them. The bunny looks toward the sky with sparkles in his eyes and a small smile on his lips. The squirrel and the black birds are also staring upward with eyes wide. The spider family stay on their tree with eyes toward the sky.
    In a moment, seven colors appears and bends in an arch that hangs in the sky. The bunny jumps up and down. His umbrella slips from his hand and falls to the ground. He laughs and claps his hands. "Do you see that? Look! Look!" the bunny shouts as he points at the rainbow.
    The squirrel is surprised by the bunny's reaction but more by the beauty of the rainbow. She has seen rainbows before but this one is particularly large and particularly beautiful to her. Laughter escapes her lips. Baby Spider jumps and chortles and slips on the edge of Mama Spider's back but Papa Spider catches him and places him back on Mama's back but he is grinning and so is Mama. The black birds tilt their heads at the bunny, squirrel and the spider family. They have seen rainbows many times before and is not impressed. Perhaps the bunny, the squirrel and the spider family are still much too young, they thought, as they fly away.
    "Yippee!" the bunny and the squirrel yell together. They both jumps up and down.
     "Well, we must get going," says Papa Spider as he crawls down the tree follow by Mama with Baby still laughing.
    "I've waited two weeks and now I finally saw a rainbow. My papa is right. He said, 'Patience is rewarding.'" The bunny sucks in a long breath and lets it out. He picks up his umbrella and says, "I must get home now. Thank you for being with me, squirrel."
    "Don't thank me. I have enjoyed my time, bunny." The squirrel laughs lightly.
    "Goodbye," says the bunny with a large grin and he hops away.
    "Goodbye!" The squirrel waves until she could not see the bunny anymore. Then she turns toward home with a smile.