"After all this time?" 

"~Always"

It was fall and the boy with the blond hair and his mother were in a field. A field of apples to be exact. The trees were just starting to lose their colorful leaves; red, gold, orange, and brown swirling around the boy as he leapt hoping catch one.

"Are you ever going to help me pick these apples?" The mother asks her boy.

"I am looking," the boy replies slightly annoyed. "I'm looking for the perfect apple." The mother rolls her eyes.

"Well stop looking for the perfect apple and help me out too, ok." The boy smiled a smile at his mother that showed intellectual superiority.

"I'm sorry that you do not understand, mother. I will help you find your apples." The mother was slightly taken aback by her son's words but let it be as he climbed a tree filled with ripe apples. "Catch mother," he said with a smile as he threw a red, juicy apple down to her. She caught it and added it to her growing pile in the bag she carried.

Then the boy saw something from a few trees away that made his heart beat fast. It was bright, green, and shiny. "I need that apple," he thought to himself. He shimmied down the tree as fast as his legs could carry him. Then he raced down the field towards the tree.

"Where are you going?" The mother asked her son.

"I'll be right back mother," the boy responded. "I have found the most perfect apple and must have it for myself."

He continued to race down the field as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him, leaping over sticks and stones as well as rotted apples. When he finally reaches the tree he shimmies up it as fast as he can. When he reaches the apple he lightly picks it, sticks it in his shirt, and carefully shimmies back down. He races back down the field to his mother, apple in hand. She holds out the basket but he shakes his head.

"No? What do you mean no?" The mother asks confusedly.

"I think I want to keep this one to myself," he replies, his eyes only on the apple never leaving it.

"You want to eat it here then?" She suggests.

"No, I'd rather not. Let's go home now mother." The young boy's mother is slightly taken aback by her son's sense of authority, but they leave anyways.

At home, the boy treasures the apple. He loves the apple. It never leaves his side. One day, the apple goes missing.

"Mum have you seen my apple? The green one?" The mother thinks for a long moment before responding.

"No I don't think I have. Don't you always have it?"

"I do Mum, I do. But I seem to have lost it." The boy starts crying.

"I'm sorry darling, but it's just an apple."

"It's not just an apple," the boy says, tears rising. "You don't understand." The boy's mother sees that she has accidentally hurt her son, but she doesn't know what to do. She walks over to the fridge for a snack.

"I found it!" She yells. "I found your apple!" The boy with the blond hair races back into the room hope filling his eyes. His eyes quickly find his apple and he races towards it.

"Thank you Mum! I'm sorry for being so rude," he cries. Then he rushes off to his room, apple in arms.

***

It is now winter and the apple is turning brown. The boy knows what he must do.

"Mum, we need to hold a funeral," he says very slowly.

"What? Why? Who died?" She says frantically.

"It's not like that,"the boy says slowly. "It's my apple."

"What? You still have that old thing?"

"Don't call it 'that old thing,' I love it." The boy is hurt.

"I'm sorry, I just can't believe you still have it. After all this time it's still with us."

"And it always will be. Even when it's soul has departed from this world it will live on in my heart forever."