1970s
Shoes of all styles lie dormant in the entryway, and decade-old family photographs line the walls of the Cobbler’s stagnant home. Scents of leather and shoe-shine waft through the candlelit air. The Cobbler sits at her desk, accompanied by a worn photo of her child and a ceramic vase holding a daylily flower. She sifts through her drawer, filled with a collection of shoe patterns from years of work, searching for inspiration.

Dulled pencil in hand, the Cobbler sketches out the anatomy of a pair of boots with feathering strokes and a loving touch. She knows he’s not a child anymore, but she still cuts the sole of the shoe, tough enough to withstand the climb of any tree. She knows he’s grown and doesn’t want to see her anymore, but she still picks a leather soft enough to mold to his growing feet. Most of all, she knows she misses him, so she concentrates on the sole’s details, adding extra staples and glue so that the boot will stay with him, much longer than she. As the Cobbler sews and hammers, she thinks back to how he’d run wild, his voice echoing through the forest. Ever since he moved away, the forest’s chorus has grown quiet and stale.

She stitches the leather with her sturdiest thread, weaving ribbon through the eyelets. They are hardly perfect, but the Cobbler created them with a love that will rest within the boots until they no longer have a purpose.

The Cobbler cradles the boots in her arms, smiling at the thought of her child wearing them. She places the boots into a cardboard box, covers them gently with tissue paper and wraps a ribbon around the sides. With the box tucked under her arm, she laces up her own shoes and stands, facing the front door. As her hand reaches toward to the doorknob, she hesitates. Today is not the day, she decides; it’s too cold outside. She’ll wait for warmer weather.

As days pass, she follows the same routine: putting on her shoes, tucking the box beneath her arm, and readying to deliver the shoes to him. But some days she’s too hungry, and others, she’s too tired. As weeks turn to months, she falls back into the haven of idle reminiscence. After a while, she hides the box away in a closet where she doesn’t have to see it. And though the shoes are ready to wear, they spend their years collecting dust in the dark.

Time deals a brutal hand to the boots and the Cobbler. After the Cobbler passes away, even when he receives a letter from the coroner, her child does not return to his mother’s home. He keeps the bad memories of them together dormant and the good memories alive. All the while, still in their place, the boots yearn for the day they’ll leave their box, when they’ll find their purpose.

1990s
“Plunk, Plunk, Plunk” mumbles Kid’s shoes as she walks with her eyes to the ground, surrounded by shadowy clouds in the sky. She is so enamored with the slope of the dusty earth under her feet that she neglects the world around her. There is beauty within the day and a spark within her, but her mind distracts her from knowing it.

Today, she stumbles upon an estate sale. In Kid’s mind, there are three categories of junk in the home: overused furniture, plain clothes and miscellaneous clutter. But beneath this mess hides a pair of boots. The tongue is shriveled and stale and years of dust cake the leather, but the sole remains pristine, as if they have never walked a day in their life. The boots feel right in her palms, and so they become hers.

The boots fit Kid. She dashes through the rain jumping in puddles, giddy. With each step, “clunk, clunk, clunk,” the boots stand taller and grow brighter in resemblance to the day they were crafted. In these shoes, the ground is no longer as interesting as it was before. She smiles as the wind tickles her cheeks and the sky paints a picture just for her.

Kid rushes through the door of her home to replace the tattered laces with a ribbon embossed with the sun and moon. She hurriedly squeezes dollops of paint onto a pallet, brushing clouds on the leather. The boots become her artwork. In front of her mirror, Kid takes a deep breath and exhales, standing in place as her mind hums with sunshine memories and lilac skies. She imagines all the open roads and people that await her, for her journey has just begun. The boots are vessels that allow her to unabashedly express herself every step of the way.

Several years pass; the boots’ creases grow more defined, and Kid’s confidence grows stronger. With a ticket in hand and the boots in a lasso dangling from her shoulders, Kid boards a train to the East Coast. The ache she feels for the childhood she’s leaving behind is overwhelmed by her excitement for maturing in a world she has only just started to understand.

Kid sits in a window seat for the view. She draws faces in the fog of the window and traces the mountains and the trees. The boots lie beside Kid. But for the first time, Kid feels the ground solid beneath her, even without them. When the train comes to a halt, Kid hurriedly gathers her bag and heads off. She pays no mind to the boots that remain under her seat. She doesn’t even notice the boots remain under her seat. With a final glimpse of Kid’s shining smile as she exits the train car, the boots smile back.

2000s
“Final destination for today: Eureka!” a voice bellows through the intercom. After the engine shuts off, the Conductor makes her rounds for the night. She weaves through the aisles of each car with a checklist in mind: lights off, bathroom doors closed, seats empty and tray tables up. The Conductor’s feet ache and her head buzzes with exhaustion. At the last car, she takes a seat and closes her eyes. How peaceful it is here, in a stationed train, empty and hollow.

With reluctance, the Conductor gingerly pulls herself away from the chair and towards her impermanent home, the Hotel Monarch. As she turns, her eyes catch a glimpse of an item, bright and blue: a single boot.

The fade of the rustic leather is smooth and warm in her palms and the sun and moon laces fray sweetly. She traces her fingertips along the cracking yet vibrant wispy clouds. The Conductor searches for the other boot, under chairs, in the aisle, at the doorway. It’s nowhere to be found. She often finds lost items in the train cars, but never feels the desire to keep any of them. Until now. She doesn’t want to let go of this lonely boot. She stands awaiting her taxi, with one hand wrapped around the luggage handle, and the other entwined with the laces that dangle from her fingertips.

The next morning, before departure, the Conductor stops by the Help and Communications desk. To the right of the desk lies the lost and found bin. She is familiar with the bin, for she visits it each night after her rounds, placing miscellaneous knick- knacks inside. But today is unusual. Instead, the Conductor seeks a memento from the bin to nurture as her own: the misplaced boot.

“Can I help you?” a voice emerges from behind the desk. The Attendee curiously looks at the Conductor. With a ponderous gaze, she pulls the boot from her luggage and the Attendee’s eyes blossom with stars. “Wow, that’s beautiful. Let me check if we have the other.”

Though the missing boot is nowhere in sight, the Conductor allows the Attendee to hold the other, and examine it. The Conductor likes the way the Attendee handles the boot, with gentle hands and eyes wide with curiosity. The two talk for a while, pondering whose dreams the clouds were made of, and where the star-studded laces were once tied.

They are lost in conversation, somewhere between the clouds and the stars. Their nervous smiles and mutual hesitation tell a story of a hidden love. Neither of them wants the exchange to end. So, the Attendee promises to search for the lost boot with the Conductor the next time her train comes around.

The Attendee keeps the promise. One week later, the Conductor happily exits the train at the Attendee’s station, and the two meet to search every street corner, every ditch, every nook of the cobblestone town for the boot.

The two are side-by-side for so long, immersed in each other’s words, that the intent to find the boot evades their minds completely. Years later, they move in together, and place the lonesome boot in the center of their fireplace mantle. They still go on walks, musing about the lost pair.

Strolling far and near, they know they no longer need to find the missing boot. In each other’s company, they’ve already found all that they need.

2020s
It’s nice here, the boot thinks, amongst a neverending expanse of grass, flowers and bushes. It’s a place where the sun’s rays are all too friendly with the boot’s leather, and the night rain loves to collect in its basin.

The boot doesn’t quite know how it got here. It holds onto a few misshapen memories of its laces tangling to the luggage of a stranger and being tossed out of a window, tumbling through the air as the locomotive rumbled away. The boot always dreamt of flight, of a moment prolonged, suspended in a territory of its very own. It remains in liminal space between life with Kid in the city, and a new life somewhere in the unnamed ether.

When the boot lands, it is upright. Its sole plants firmly on flat, moist terrain. The boot spends time getting to know its neighbors: the flowered purple petals, the soft grass, the full bushes. But months pass, and when they all have nothing left to share, they gaze at the night sky together and revel in the beauty of the brightest stars.

While the boot loves the way its leather glistens and glimmers on the clearest of nights, cloudy days are always its favorite. The boot stares as clouds slowly contort into new shapes and sizes, but it desires most to glimpse silhouettes like the ones etched on its bleached leather. It has yet to identify a cloud that appears just as its clouds do, but knows, on the right day, it will catch one floating by.

And in the meantime, as its petal-bearing neighbors of daylilies and lilacs fade into the earth to leave behind their children, and those children leave behind their grandchildren, the boot spends months acquainting itself with the new family. Time and time again, these children are friendly with the boot: they take root in the earth that collects in the foot of the shoe, their stems and leaves wrap around the boot’s fraying laces and stretched heel.

As the plants’ grip on the boot grows tighter, it knows that it has stood still for quite some time. It knows from the way its leather wrinkles and drops into the soil. The way its eyelets rust over. The way its rubber sole peels away from the leather bottom. For the first time, the boot notices a letter etched into the inside of the sole. Having rested for decades, the words are pristine and clear. It is protected by the glue, the staples and the will of the Cobbler, who let all her love flow into her message, for she had nowhere else to put it but the sole.

There will be many days ahead, some good, some bad, but remember you are loved by another. With these boots by your side, please don’t forget the sky, the stars and the shared smiles of the world.

And so the boot remains, falling apart, yet adorned with an honest message, for only the flowers and the clouds to admire.