Evie and the Apple Tree
There was once an apple tree that would not bloom. Evie found this devastating, because she had read once that apple blossoms meant the promise of good fortune, and she felt it would be a very good fortune indeed to have the promise of apples to come.
Each year she desperately hoped that the pink-white blossoms would appear, and each year they did not. Finally her mother decided that it was time for the apple tree to come down, for she said a fruit tree that bears no fruit is better suited to firewood. But Evie begged her mother to leave it for another year. Her mother agreed, and as Spring approached, she wished so very hard as she stared at the apple tree that she thought her heart might burst.
When Spring passed and yet again there were no blossoms, she thought her heart might break.
Suddenly, Evie could not bear it any longer: she turned her gaze from the apple tree and vowed to wish no more.
Her heart hardened then, and she went about her days with a cold stare, for she had let all her wishing fade away. Her mother saw the change come over her daughter, and did not cut down the apple tree, for she hoped with her own desperation that it might bloom and give Evie back her wishing.
Then came a year where Evie's mother forgot to wish, and, distracted by the things of life, both Evie and her mother did not think of the apple tree at all.
That was the year it bloomed.
In that moment all the wishing flooded back to both Evie and her mother. After all this time, there was a promise of things to come.