She’s 19 years old and he’s an adventure. He has a way of surprising her with unusual gifts. For her birthday, he gives her a miniature pony-more miniature then most, because it fits in the palm of her hand. She watches, entranced, as it neighs and proudly gallops across the dining room table, upsetting the vase of flowers in the center. The toy pony’s hooves make an audible clack as it canters over the dishes before jumping over the napkin holder before finally settling down to graze in the Ceaser salad she had made for dinner.
He explains that it’s the newest technical marvel, a superb feat of animatronics. “its quite big in Japan actually,” he explains with a roguish grin . “Do you like it?” She doesn’t bother with a verbal reply before pulling him into a tight embrace. “I thought you would,” he whispers somewhere near her ear, and she can feel his smile.
She’s 21 years old and he’s a puzzle. She watches his brow furrow in confusion as he clumsily counts out the bills to pay for their lunch and she feels hot from the indignant stares from the gum chewing waiter. Later, he explains he’s hopeless with money, an incorrigible scatterbrain; she thinks it’s less of an organizational flaw than a perplexing unfamiliarity.
She’s 23 years old and he’s in big trouble—the kind of spurned female dismissal that makes otherwise reasonable men buy armfuls of sweetly rotting flowers and grovel on their knees in a vain attempt at forgiveness. She taps her three inch heels impatiently on the floor, each echoing click marking the seconds until his imminent execution. He finally stumbles into the restaurant, red faced, short of breath, and unforgivably two hours late. But before she can announce his imminent doom, he reaches behind has back and procures her favorite magnolia flowers which she is sure weren’t there a minute ago.
She’s 25 years old and the adventure has come to an end. She asked him to marry her, because she’s never really cared about tradition (or at least that’s what she’ll tell her friends). She asks him to marry her and he confesses. She is free to float through the current of change, swim down the river of life, but he is cursed to forever tread water. Peering at her with blue eyes drowning in remorse, he gently explains that they cannot grow old together, as he cannot grow at all. The bitter shock tastes metallic on her tongue as she realizes that she was merely as important as the beautiful horse he once gave her; a trifling, transitory, beautiful amusement, yet finite and once day destined to return to dust.