Daria loved climbing the olive trees on the slopes above the sea. She had often come and perched on a favorite limb just to watch the shifting clouds and changing colors of the sea below.
This day, though, she had no tome to lollygag. She was intent on gathering the plumpest of the olives for her lover’s bread. They were on the tallest old tree on the uppermost branches. Holding her basket in one hand and plucking the plump olives with the other, she relied on her bare feet on the old olive branches to keep her steady.
Was it a momentary dizziness due to her missed breakfast? Was it the ancient limb loaded with the weight of the olives giving way under the added weight of the young girl? Or was it merely fate? Maybe it was all these things that led to Daria crashing down through the breaking limbs. Olives flying, hands grabbing but just missing, cracking sounds brittle and sharp, and then she was on the ground. The ground met her hurling body not with a welcome but with the sharpness of mountain stone and the heaviness of death.
Daria was laid out in her wedding dress on the kitchen table by the village women. Their salty tears fell on the folds of the pretty lace. So sad. So young and lovely they said.
Demetrius had already heard. Friends had rushed to the sea to tell him, to fetch him home. They tried to console him as he was overcome at the sight of his pretty sweetheart. So young she looked, and so small and fragile like a delicate bird fallen from the sky.
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