Wax and Wane (flash fiction)

The shoemaker’s children did not have no shoes – they had the very best of shoes.
Not fancy shoes, not made with glass or glitter, not stiletto-heeled or flat canvased, not bearing blinking lights or tiny wheels. Simply perfect shoes.

Every half-moon night, the shoemaker created these shoes.
Good quality material. Built by experienced, fairly-compensated and still-curious cordwainers alongside happy apprentices.
Never pinching. Never hot. Reasonably priced, designed with a cobbler’s repairs in mind, they were decades-long-lasting shoes. Shoes you could save for children’s children. You could pick them up and twist them between your hands, put them down and they would return to their smooth, ready shape. These shoes held your foot like a friend held your hand.

These were shoes that were always ready to take you wherever you wanted to go. Through sticky subway stations to favourite people’s houses, where sugary watermelon candies waited. Along wind-singing downtown streets, past flashing game arcades. Across damp wide green boulevards to the top of the steps on the last day of school before summer, another year graduating behind you.

These shoes you could get a little muddy, a little wet, a little scuffed or dusty. You could dance in them. You could hike in them, you could take curtseys and bows in them.

These were shoes that slipped on and off and never let sticks stick in.

You could have them in whichever rainbow colours you wanted, or in black, white, grey. They would take you to the library, or to the concert, or to the movie in the park after dark. They were shoes that would take you to secret quiet corners, dragon’s hordes and through sunflower fields to beaches by wave-chased lakes. They would take you to ice cream shops and fried chicken counters. You could wear them anywhere, to play, study, celebrate or show off . And when you were tired they would take you home safe to bed.

Wonderful shoes.

Every half-moon night, the shoemaker stood under the window in his cellar workshop, and he drew and shaped these shoes. Perfect shoes. He would twist them in their hands, to test their strength.

Morning would find the shoemaker’s children shaking him awake, and over eggs on rice, he would describe the night’s creations to his children.

Then the children would put the dishes in the sink, take the boxes of the other shoes, the shoes the shoemaker made all the other times, and they would walk out onto the asphalt with their tough wide-toed bare feet, and deliver those inferior shoes, smiling about the shoemaker’s dreams.