Roof Over The Heart
Honey For The Heart - 18
It was one of those long June evenings when the sun was in no hurry to set. The dragonflies buzzed, their wings stirring soft music into the warm air. Whispering Woods had slipped into that golden hour where everything glowed… leaf edges, pebbles in the creek, even blades of wild grass.
Bumble the bear sat on a mossy stump, arranging pinecones into a neat spiral. Piggy, just a few paw-steps away, was carving stars into a trunk of an old oak tree with a pine needle.
Bumble suddenly asked, “Piggy… do you love me?”
Piggy looked up, squinting slightly in the amber light.
“I… don’t know how to answer that,” he said gently.
Bumble furrowed his brow. “You don’t?”
Piggy set the needle down and sat cross-legged.
“If I say yes, you might begin listening too closely to how I say it. You’ll measure it in how many hugs I give, how many silences I fill.
And if I say no… you might start believing it’s because you’re not enough. And that would never be true.”
Piggy wrinkled his snout a little. “You know… you’re asking the wrong question.”
Bumble blinked. “Am I?”
Piggy nodded. “It’s not about whether I love you. It’s about whether you do.”
Bumble frowned. “But… I asked you.”
Piggy dug up a half-exposed quartz crystal near the root of the oak and held it to the light.
“Some days, love may come as laughter, honey cakes, or muddy pawprints. But other days, it may not show up at all. Not because it’s gone, but because I might be lost in my own weather.
If you don’t know how to stay warm on those days, you’ll think love has left you.”
He handed the crystal to Bumble, a rainbow tucked inside.
“I do love you, Bumble. But it may not always sound loud. And it doesn’t have to.”
“When we became friends,” Piggy said, “I promised never to love you in a way that dims your light; only in a way that helps it glow even brighter.”
Bumble rolled onto his back and watched a ladybug cross the stream on a floating lotus leaf.
Slowly, brushing grass off his fur, he said,
“So if I don’t love myself first… I won’t know how to feel it from anyone else?”
Piggy smiled.
“Exactly. Self-love isn’t selfish, Bumble. It’s the roof over your heart. Without it, even the gentlest rain feels cold.”
“And if you don’t build it… one day, you might think even I stopped loving you,” said Piggy.
Bumble leaned his head against Piggy’s shoulder, staring at the sherbet-pink sky.
“Then I’ll start building it from this moment,” he said.
And he offered Piggy the last berry-bun…after taking a big bite himself.
Piggy accepted it without a word, as if some gestures spoke louder than words.
The wind began to turn cold as the first stars blinked through the branches.
On that quiet June night, two beings , each wrapped in a blanket around their heart…
walked on, paw in hoof, into the depth of the woods.
