I. Garden Apple
The undergrowth was beginning to itch underneath her bare feet. They didn’t hurt her before. Nothing did. Perhaps they knew that she had disobeyed the rule.
Spies lurked everywhere. The very trees spoke to each other in their own secret language. She used to understand it but her knowledge of woodland dialects was slowly fading. She heard them mutter unintelligibly to each other and feared she may be too late.
She rushed towards their resting place last night. She was certain he’d still be there, ever the obedient follower of orders she didn’t understand. But now that she had fully grasped their situation, she thought it prudent to tell him. They were, after all, partners until death – because they were told to be.
True enough, she found him in the same grove she had left earlier that day. “What’s going on?” He asked, instantly noticing. “Why do you have leaves all over your skin?”
That question made her want to slug him. The snake was right. It was surprising for such an unassuming creature to provide such revolutionary insight.
“Here,” she handed him the half-eaten apple in her hand. “Why don’t you finish that and find out.”
II. Polished Red
Women should be allowed to be themselves and not become ruined by age, playing the only role that chauvinistic, sadistically traditional men see fit.
Unfortunately, the man she married was so like the rest, and so she had to kill him. She thought he’d be ready for her vision: an era of strong, independent women, capable to rule.
And why not? Across the country, women are taking arms to fight wars, start revolutions, usurp sovereignty. She herself had mastered the dark arts for her agenda, at the risk of her own life.
But now her stepdaughter is a shame. A young lady that could use her beauty to turn oceans into flaming seas, mountains into silver castles, men into putty, kings to slaves and vice versa. And what does she decide to do? Sweep floors for seven little men!
But she’d found her stepdaughter’s hiding place: a forest cottage. She had made sure her stepdaughter would be alone when she visited. She knocked on the door, concealed underneath an old woman’s rags. She’s going to make that little twit eat a poisonous apple, no matter what it takes.
A necessary thing to do.
For deliverance – the future liberation of women.
III. Bloodfruit
The blood apple ripens only once or twice in a year cycle, and sometimes not at all. They said it’s so shiny that it glimmers in the night, like flames from divine torches blazing from afar. When you set eyes upon it, it burns inside you and never quite leaves. When you find the perfect one, you lose the desire for another, and once you’ve tasted it, your life simulates a believable perfection, a state of undiluted euphoria guaranteed to blind you.
Blood apples contain the Meaning of Life. Living without tasting it is like a wakeful death. However, some legends become timeworn and subsequently forgotten, while others get revised in the retelling.
Now, no one truly knows what the bloodfruit – as the bloodapple is also called – looks like. Maybe once in a while people would come across it, but it won’t be recognized. Some will think they’ve found it, only to have a festering aftertaste once they’ve taken a bite. But much as it is a need, the bloodfruit has grown more elusive and almost improbable to find. Like the Holy Grail, like the Phoenix, like nacreous cloud formations, like the true meaning of dreams.
