Day 22: A character finds something wholly unexpected at the farmer’s market “Palm fronds” (I had an odd dream last night and I put all of it to use.)

Palm by a. dombroski, flickr

He told me he would leave it at the citrus stall. When I arrived and explained that Manuel had left a gift for me here, a woman pulled out a metal locker from under her table. She set it on a crate of pineapples and opened the lock with a key from her apron.

What confronted me seemed to be a mass of moving palm fronds, some mysterious animal. She pulled it out unceremoniously and put it in my hands. A large beak clamped down hard on my finger. I yelled out and she pinched its jaws until it let go.

“So, did you like it?” said Manuel as I sat in my steaming car. He was too eager for me to approve of anything he did or gave to me.

“Why did you give me something that would bite me?” I said, offended. Only the night before, I had dreamed I had been sitting next to my ex and his new wife and he spoke words to her I had never heard, never knew were possible.

Something about that mass of aged palm fronds was a portent or was it only a joke.