Louise Morning has never been, despite her name, a morning person. How awful the necessity to crawl out of bed when the sun is still sound asleep! No cheerful alarm tone could change Louise's grumpy mood every morning the freedom of lying in is taken away from her. She tried everything. But on a rainy day in September, probably the 17th but I'm not quite sure, it was somehow different. Three strange and unusual happenings occured. #1: Louise felt a strong, piercing pain in her head. (I should probably mention that Louise had never been ill her whole life - admirable, isn't it?) #2: The wooden board at the top of her bead was scratched all over. #3: Her pillow was nowhere to be found. Scary. Not sure if she might be still asleep, Louise slapped her own face. The hurt proved she was fully awake. Slowly and thoughtful, she entered the bathroom. At first, she looked inside the mirrow, two seconds later she screamed, four seconds later she blacked out. But to look on the bright side: Louise found her pillow. It was skewered by some branches coming out of her head. And, next to that, she found a good reason to stay at home that day.
Don't worry, Louise recovered her senses a few minutes later. Immediately afterwards she cried, laughed and acted like a deer, all at the same time. When she heard someone knocking on her door, she decided impulsively to stay quiet. Deep inside she knew she couldn't stay in her apartment forever, but she successfully ignored that at that moment. The knocking didn't stop. She knew it could only be Alice, her best friend since probably ever, with whom she had a kind of childish argument the night before.
"Louise, don't be stupid! Open that door, we have to get over that. We're grown up now, don't you remember?" Louise remembered. After many pointless fights they both agreed to grow up and stop acting like children. This didn't quite work out, so they both decided to restart their friendship everyday by forgetting whatever had happened the day before. Louise gave in.
"Alice sweetheart, it's just not about that. Something weird happened. I've changed.. Something is growing inside of me, you know? You can even see it from outside. Something huge, something complex and branchy.... ". Louise couldn't pull herself together anymore. She bursted into laughter.
"Louise, stop kidding me and open that door! I'm serious!", Alice answered angrily.
Louise did like she was told. She longed to see the expression of surprise on Alice's face. It was outstanding. Louise, clever as always, was prepared and took out her camera to make a picture of it - with this picture she won a prize a few years later, but that's not important now.
"What... How... You..... Whaaaaaaaat? Louise.. WHY ARE THERE BRANCHES COMING OUT OF YOUR HEAD?!?" was Alice's reaction. Both couldn't explain it and both couldn't calm down. It was only a few hours later, after trying desperately to find any reason, that Alice made a sound of exhaustion and surrender, followed by the suggestion to just let it be the way it was and go outside to drink some coffee. Louise first gave her a look of reluctance but then she realized the idea wasn't that bad. "Ok. Let's make this strange day even weirder."
It was like a movie scene. Walking through the streets, Louise caused chaos. Children bursted into tears, cars stopped on the streets and innocent citizen ran into street lamps. But suddenly Alice screamed enthuastically: "Louise! You produce fruits!" And she was right - her "horns" were decorated with little grapes. "Amazing", Louise thought, "I start to enjoy all of that."
And she really did enjoy it from that moment on. One week later, everything was back to normal. Louise and the people around her got used to her special feature and were delighted by the free grapes. In addition to that, birds settled down at the branches and felt very comfortable. Kind of a happy end.
"Alice, I realized something..", Louise mentioned one evening, "isn't it quite often the case that what might be a burden for you helps the people next to you? I mean, of course I love my portable garden but it can be highly exhausting sometimes. But now I see it in a different light - I can make other people happy with free grapes and I can even give birds a home! How amazing is that! We often complain about things happening in our lifes we just don't understand or see a reason for because we're too blind to see the effect on others."
Alice nodded speechless, amazed by the insight of her friend. "Oh Alice. This would be a perfect ending for a story, wouldn't it?", Louise continued. Again, Alice nodded but felt exactly as strange as when she found out that the electron orbits the nucleus in the same way as the planets orbit our sun.
