The Little Lost Boot: A Coda

Written by popular request (from my mother)

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It was a disturbingly quiet morning for the little boot.  Normally he was being pelted by pebbles and ground into gravel by 7am, but this morning he was tied up to the bottom of the pack, like he had seen other boots tied on the trail when their owners wore sandals.  It was a luxurious ride and a welcome rest.  It must have been one for his owner too -- for suddenly he, his sister, and the pack were tossed into the darkness under a large bus.  20 minutes later, he blinked at the light, and at a sign that read "Viana."  He was traveling by pack again, past a playground, a row of trees, a stunning view of the cluttered roofs below when THWACK!  A fall, a sharp thud, then darkness.

--

The girl nearly ran down Viana's narrow cobblestone streets, darting between the towering cramped buildings made of heavy slabs of tan stone, gathering strange looks from townspeople out for Sunday siesta.  One, two, three pharmacies sought out for allergy meds, and none open on a Sunday, even the one marked 24-hour.  And what was worse, across all the streets of this town there was no lone boot roasting in the midday heat.  She would have to buy sandals.

--

The boot sat beside the counter next to the rack of hats.  A woman's hand had seized him, carried him to this shoe store, given him to the man who owned Planet Agua.  The man had placed him here, a pile of fabric and rubber and mud without value.  It had been better, he thought, to be battered against the rocks and thorny bushes than to sit here, alone and thus useless, purposeless.  As he thought this, a boy came into the store with his mother and his two friends.  "We need to buy a hat quickly, then run back to tell Julia the store's open again after siesta," the mother said. The mother went to the counter to look for hats -- and suddenly, the boot realized the boy was looking at him.  Then the boy was picking him up, and the owner of Planet Agua was saying that someone had found it and dropped it off at the store, and the boy was saying, "That's my friend!  That's her boot!," and the mother and the friends were overjoyed, and they bought the hat and raced the boot back to the girl, who was in the middle of talking to video of her family on the computer, and the girl saw her friends, and the girl saw the boot, and the boot saw the girl, and they both remembered what it was like to be loved.