A Turtle by Olga Guniavaia

“What does this cloud remind you of?”
Jane asks, stretching on the grass and exposing her face to the rays of the sun.

Tom is too busy looking at a sun puddle on the girl’s pretty face, so it takes him a moment to look up to the sky.

“Which one?” the guy squints and puts his palm to his forehead like a "peak", fencing himself off from the annoying sun.

“There it is,” Jane extends her hand, which until then rested peacefully on Tom’s chest. He grumbles displeasedly and tries to return her palm. But Jane continues to point to the sky, and Tom surrenders. He messes up his red hair and stares at one of the clouds. He knits his eyebrows, so that a crease appears between them. Jane always tries to smooth it out, but now, like a small child, she is too occupied by the white clouds in the sky. Tom finally answers:

“A cat.”

Jane, who was waiting for a detailed report, is lost for a second, but then looks at the sky again, and frowns, just like Tom before.

“Where did you see a cat there? That is a rabbit!”

“You have an unexplained fetish of rabbits!” Tom sighs in exasperation. “And if you know it by yourself, why ask me?”

“To know what you see!”

“I see a cat!”

Jane opens her mouth, but finds nothing to say. For several seconds, she swallows air, trying to come up with something prickly, but then turns away and grumbles resentfully:

“And yet it's a rabbit!”

Suddenly, Tom rises to his feet and then lies down again, but now his head is next to Jane’s feet.

“Look from this angle. The ears are two legs, the lower part of the body is a round head..,” Jane, already lying nearby, is carefully watching the movements of Tom’s hand. “The rest of the body is a shell, and there’s a little tail ...”

“And who is it?” the girl wonders. Tom smiles contentedly.

“A turtle.”

Jane slightly raises an eyebrow and carefully looks at the cloud. Meanwhile, Tom watches as she wrinkles her nose childishly, bites her lip, and the sun's rays play on her cheeks. Suddenly, Jane’s forehead is smoothed out, and a slight smile appears on her face.

“Yes. Definitely a turtle.”

Tom grunts and, bending over Jane, weightlessly kisses the corner of her lips. Then he rests on his back, and she snuggles up to him and puts her palm on his chest. Tom slowly runs his fingers trough her black hair, smiling peacefully.


A turtle is in the sky, and the sun is in Jane’s hair.