Emerence didn’t join me in these little outbursts, though she too noticed the fragrances bearing the message of the season and the barely visible shoots of green, not yet a full canopy, or a bud, not even a baby leaf, appearing on the branches, reminding us that work was beginning in the fields; and in our villages the new-born light, diffracted in spring’s prism, would bring back the girl who once jumped and danced without a thought or care — the girl I once was, the girl she had been.