The water stood still as I looked at the reflected image of myself in its placid surface. The place looked the same as always: lush green grass and weeds that leave their cool trails across one’s bare calves, bright blue skies that made you squint when you looked at it, and the water. Everything had grown up around it, just like I had, but the water had suffered and the world remained unaffected by it. The first time I had ever seen this place, the water had been clear enough that one could see each and every individual piece of sand as long as they would want to stare for that long.
“Mommy! Daddy! Look!”
The girl squats there, her feet submerged in the water and slowly sinking into the sand. A small white, sky blue, and tickle-me-pink sundress drapes over her body into the water staining the very bottom of it with a temporary translucent off-white. She doesn’t care though. What is in the water has captured all her attention.
The simplicities of our childhood are just little mind games based off our ignorance to the world. Just as time would tell, the world grows up and all those living on it do as well. Those lost in the bliss of their young lives soon begin to realize the difficulties they soon face and seek out a place of solace. Spring brings the flowers on the weeds and the newborn animals wandering helplessly around. The loss of the occasional young animal raises the tension of the area as their parents frantically search, yet the reuniting of the two has the greatest potential of happiness the world has yet to see. The simple joy of watching the world begin anew with the next generation along the edge of the water can settle even the most violent of souls for a while.
“Jenna! Jenna! You’re being ridiculous!” shouts the girl as she giggles with delight while sitting on a large rock with her bare feet resting lightly in the miraculously cooler  water in front of her. Smaller and flatter stones slide from her hand as she tosses them to glide across the water, each one skipping along the way. A young dog jumps as though a marine mammal along the side of a ship chasing the stones and clumsily tripping along the bottom of the shallow water, splashing droplets of water all over the girl. Laughter and barking fill the unusually warm late spring air causing the world to disappear around the bubble encircling the oasis. The girl, the dog, and the water become a single entity in the universe for that moment.
There isn’t much you can get from a place while growing up. No toys. No pictures. No friends. Only the memories that you share with yourself. Despite how hard you can try, animals, plants, and inanimate objects only inspire those thoughts, they can’t make them. You can try your hardest to bring others into that place that belongs to you, mine being my oasis in the desert of my childhood, but they’ll never understand the meaning and connection I share with my place. No one could ever do so besides those animals that were born, lived, and died in that very area. This was not my case, but this place was a home to me so I experimented with those few people who I could reach out and grasp long enough to pull them into me. Never was I a social butterfly, but I tried. I attempted what I was not ever a perfect student in despite my constant failure.
“I love you,” he whispers softly in her ear as a hand gently moves to rest on her own. A heart skips a beat, lips gently brush against another’s cheek, and the warmth of the day fades away into a myriad of colors.
Faceless remains the boy that I first brought to such a heartland of my being. The luscious smell of his department store cologne remains as part of a memory, or maybe it’s just what I want to believe because of the oasis, my oasis. The occasional e-mail back and forth attracts a fond memory or two, but he was much too timid just as wanderlust had reached out its ancient tentacles and fully enraptured my soul. Life had decided on two separate paths with mine down the road less traveled.
It had been long since I had returned to this place. Many years passed and many miles were covered since then, and yet it still called me back. Perhaps a plea for help against the oncoming terror as the sign now looms over the area on a distant hill condemning my secret oasis. The infectious disease is moving in on my sanctuary, the land cleared around it and slowly destroying its beauty so that they may live on and prosper. The water is now disgustingly murky that even if someone wanted to go deep within its own soul, they wouldn’t be able to see anything but their own reflection staring back at them. There is no Fiver here to warn every living being of the oncoming terror. They all stand oblivious, they’re heartbeats all in synch to that of my oasis and, at one point, my own as well. Their heartbeats have become fainter whereas my string has been connected to that of the world. So as in tradition with the end of all relationships, a silent farewell is spoken and the connection is severed for the very last time.