As the light fell, it was if the autumn and summer had leaked their orange tints.
The forest floor was ambient. A florescent current rose from the last day of autumn, a stream of blue graced the floor. Steam emitted as breath from the whisp from lungs hidden as ravines.
Like an orange flame, the leaves fell in sequence over the grazing earth, every leaf was grass. It was of a lady’s finesse, there she aged with beauty. Outside, it lurked within the depths, without sight or sound. Perhaps it heard the other’s calls, lost laments, a glass bubble, sparkling with it’s supernatural twinkle. It, the other was self-contained, deep within itself were the trees of flickering lights within iron skulls, mechanical retinas of frosted irises, it’s fluid of air brushing the breeze of the hairlines of steel strands. As it slowly grew with concrete waves, growing with time, It would take, collecting, from whom was born as a surrogate saving itself the strangers who assimilate, footprints of streets, and all waking knowledge of here she lies, the city.
Hundreds of years they were in solitude.
Until they were aware of their presence.
They, separate intelligences, the urban breath caught in the autumn of the wild.
Eyes, but not to be seen, ears not to be heard, no living body, but a living presence.
It was of both entities. And both providing of different natures, they were of time, aged of knowledge youth incarnate: were they not mothers?
Upon first glance, their motherly nature wouldn’t bear a resemblance. But they were of a mother’s ways, to bear a life, bare of wisdom, a way their child will grow to realize.
Past and future moved to the method of a mother. The warm past of a child must move to the grace of a grandmother. The fallen leaves moved by as dying waves as they graced the mineral of soil, memories washed over as the breath of the wild took them without a predestined path. The ground absorbed serpentine, confetti, perhaps lost toys and other things children forgot.
They were carried over the ancient nutrients through to be caught in hairlike roots of ancient trees. Then things lost and forgotten, and forgotten things as napkins, eggshells, papers, burnt embers of forest campfires, made to be left behind by the foreigners from the city, those footsteps to vanish upon moss over-grown rocks of isolation, people from the steel and glass complexes, the many, many cries from the shrieking mechanical beasts that tread, there long after.
The future, rose gradually, hinted urban airs into the autumn forest breeze. The stark black strings of hair, the mother would rise gradually, giving the air of urban into the autumn forest breeze. It would wait in the darkness of transparency, of time upon new light where she dwelled.
It perceived the living floor.
He was sun-darkened, he preferred to stay out of the shade. Each day, he would walk into the woods, as to grow within it’s bounds, to talk to trees as to understand them. But he never left. There, an elderly woman who sat next with him while having a picnic lunch. Sometimes, they’d hold hands while strolling through the woods, at times, they’d listen to the robins with whom they’d sing and the wind would sing along.
The luminescence rested on the trees. It was the end of autumn and leaves fell as memories of before passed. October. A part of summer felt there, but was shutting down as winter from the city filled the forest.
Any day, she may leave and never return.
Today she must leave for the town.
They would sit upon the grass feeling the remains of the summer-autumn warmth. The birds would play their piece softly and the boy stirred fitful grunts, whilst eyes closed. The elder lady did not tilt her head from where it was positioned. She stared at the remains of the sun, drinking the aging dandelion wine, her mouth enclosed to a slight humble smile, she opened her eyes.
“Is there something bothering you?” she asked.
“I had a nightmare,” said the young boy.
“Nightmares during the daytime?”
“You know what I’m talking about Grandma, a bad dream, haven’t you had one of those in the afternoon?”
“Not anymore, my child. I’ve dreamed all the dreams to colour the fragments of dusk with the remnants of dawn.”
He sat there, fingers and palms interlocking. “Grandma, I had a really bad dream”
“I don’t know anymore” he said as if it just lingered out of his mind. A shame of the very moment he were to speak the words, he lost them, he had already forgotten. Now, he shut his eyes again, he longed to remember.
“Was it about me?” she asked, stretching to regain her composure.
“Why, yes, it had to have been.” she said whilst gently smiling to the boy. “I was off to another land, distant from here, that what troubles you.”
“No need to be afraid.” she said. “There I was leaving this place, and you were looking for me, and somehow, lost in smoke you were, found me and all of a sudden, I have a heart-attack or something.”
He gave a noticeable doubt. “That’s crazy talk, Grandma.”
“Let’s see now,” said she. “Why would I do such a thing? I knew there was something off-putting with those biscuits.”
“That’s not funny, Grandma,” said he. “I can’t bare to think about carrying you and the basket all the way home.”
She quietly laughed. “Did it bother you that much?”
He nodded. “Daydreams are the worst, they make me feel sad, dreams should only be for the night.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way” She took his little hand. “Anything I can get you, to help cheer your mood?”
“We have some cookies? Cheese and cracker perhaps? Some wine?”
“You’re very kind, but no. I’ll be all right. It’s just that, well, the last few days haven’t been right. This is different than how it used to be in the early summer. Something’s happened.”
“Is this between you and your mother?”
“Oh, no, Grandma of course not,” he said with slight haste. “But don’t you feel places change people? I don’t know, I feel things like parks change people, the carnivals, and all that. Even today, like you said, the biscuits taste funny.”
“I was kidding, why do you feel this way, how do you mean?”
“They taste old. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about you Grandma. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve lost my appetite, and I wish today never happened.”
“You sure are a funny one. You know what? Enjoy today for what it is, when tomorrow comes, you’ll wish it were yesterday.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “If only today didn’t feel so funny and change everything. I don’t know. But now, out of all the other days I just had a feeling to go back home.”
“Because of your dream? Me, then booking it and then my heart-attack because I’m old and done with this place?”
“I don’t mean it like that!” he said “Now, I have to think about a bunch of things, I don’t know if I can remember! I think I’ll have, what’s the name? What you’re drinking, I’ll have some of that stuff.”
She laughed brighter than she has in the weeks that past her. “Don’t tell your poor mother you said that, it’s a shame you can’t remember your dream.”
“Don’t worry.” He hugged her tightly. “I’ll protect you no matter what!”
“Don’t worry about me okay? Just worry about yourself for the time being,” she whispered gently. “The autumn leaves dances to the whisps of the wind, but never against the current to die where whom was born.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about; But it sounds smart, it’s funny, how funny it is to hear how you think Grandma.”
“How silly.” She breathed of light laughter. “How silly the flow of time really is.”
The rested quietly, the sun and the twilight sky sparkled last light.
“You know,” said Grandmother thoughtfully, “I understand the reason of your concern. This place, it seems to be shifting. As if it were moving from one place and today the movement to the other is somewhat within our senses.”
“I’m glad you feel it, too.”
She turned her head slightly as if she noticed all the details, rest ridden, smiling softly, shutting her eyes, catching the fallen sunlight. “We, mother the night. We, mother the night.”
The sea of night washed on dawn’s shore throughout the time, softly. The afternoon sunset came on. The sun struck with a graze upon the skies with fading flashes.
Throughout the land, not a sight or scent of parks of metallic shine, long gone metal-glass domes that would appear in time, grey-to black where the growth dwells. The smells of fried meat and burnt onion soon to be seared filled the wind on concept metal. The concrete mixer whispered to the moss slated-boulders and stirred like an image, a vision soon to be realized, reflected in reverse back and forth, shining the silent shards.
The crows flew over echoing discreetly. They darted through like dark arrows to split the sun. Underneath, the child and the grandmother did not move. Only their eyelids under a split sun’s shadow flickered with awareness, only their ears were alert. Now and again, the shade would bend the trees to faint silhouettes sliding along the grass, they’d move to catch the warm winds.
Sly prickles of frozen white embers appeared on their brows to be burned away from the sun. She lifted her head, observant, listening to the dual winds. The robins sighed. She put her head down for a minute.
The boy noticed a slight change in scenery. He opened one eye and he rested on one elbow, on his backside looking around, at the stream, the islands, the leaves, at the trees.
“What’s wrong?” asked Grandmother
“Nothing,” he said, lying down again.
“There has to be something troubling you” she said
“I thought I heard something.”
“No, not the birds, something else.”
“Birds that don’t belong here.”
He didn’t answer. Grandmother felt as the limbs of the forest, roots tense and relax, tense and relax.
“I hear it” she said. “There it is again.”
In the distant of the quiet, they both listened.
“I don’t hear anything, Grandma.”
“Be patient” said she, quietly. “It’ll reoccur.”
Winter’s waves broke unto the night, freezing shards dawning the evening to turn quietly cold, ice coloured from moonlit mirrors, glass bulbs whose shine auras whisper.
“That’s nonsense. Mother isn’t here.”
“Time is speaking to us, do you hear?”
So, for the moment they listened.
“I’m sorry Grandma, I don’t hear anything,” said the boy sensing a subtle chill. He went to a sudden stance, quickly he stood. There was no colour in the sky, the wind was suspended, the stones froze, the trees were hollow.
The silence was in mirrors, it was staring to be the wind blowing over his ears, to preen along the light, leading the light somewhere beyond the fibres of his arms and legs. Grandmother took a step that would lead down the hill from their resting place.
“Grandma, don’t!” said the boy
She looked around the forest, oddly, as if it were gone away. She looked to the glass capsule of iron trees, afar, she was still listening.
The crows suddenly, a boldness of air, sounding with the full hint of human, sang softly, through echoes. They mothered the melody and rhythm and words:
“It is the evening of the day-”
Grandmother to the tune, she turned to the sky’s aria of leaves to see the robins perched on branches, where the tuned traced.
Meanwhile, the little boy made a wry face, raising his open palm violently. “Quiet down.”
“The robins are singing, my dear boy!”
The boy turned again. There the robins were, he waved to them, trying to smile.
The sun left golden streaks upon the grasses. The ancient grandmother of time spoke the seeds of the fruit of a withering flower, blew quiet husks in the cold. The robins held atop the hallowed branches and crows suspended in the sky.
The moon, dark and distant struck through the sun’s orange fermentation that poured along the leaves of grass; caught between two islands of idle contrast of the whiteness that drifted to one place as it fell from the black. The shimmer of ice, the frosted irons of the brain under-ore, the leafed trails, the tide of dusted moonbeams saw themselves in rivers, spreading complexion.
Grandmother still lay in the grass, the little boy beside her.
Music, the one who wanders rose as with the mist of lost waters. It was whispers of the deep underground of midnights of memories and passed years, of salt and flavours of mists, of acceptance and the familiar dusks of the strange.
The music sounded not unlike the ripples of water passing through sediment, snow falling, The depths of lines, drawing of the soft sound of roots growing from time. It was the sing of a voice time lost in caverns of fallen mountains. The hissing and sighing of frozen tides in deserted caves of engrained soils and missing treasures. The turn of limbs of elemental thistles of brushes brushing the sounds to be humours for buried skulls underneath sprouted earths. The warm phosphorescence and the cold, sun falling into night and a motherless moon, beams passed through generations, alter, shift, of sight.
Only a few more hours. Grandmother might leave at any time. If only the boy would decide to leave as well, just as well to gone of refined elements, elemental interiors of home.
The end of the daybreaking wind stirred silently, aware of his faded face and his stature, of the feeble child sinking by roots that grew shale molded of soil. Aware of him caught, held, as they sank ten and a thousand leagues down, on a sluice that wandered with a will of unthought wits, smoke unsparked turning as frantic, vapourized seeds, invisible smoke,
to the depths of daylight underdark.
The city lay in deep shadow, the sun’s fires of flat rays dying without conception of the city’s breath, and the frosted warmth of her fabric of living matter missing fires, the dusts of jewels dissipated, the ice of salted smoke feeding on faint breath, the sound was there, but only of airform lungs without breathing wings.
Waves that thought of time moved the soft and changing dusks within dawns into the shallows were tepid as the rivers feeding on the earths and the two o’clock sun on a translation turning in phase or time.
She mustn’t leave as to go away for the call of distance. If she leaves now, she’ll never return.
Now. The warm island mind drifted, drifted. Now. Calls across the woodlands of windless noise in the early afternoon. Come down to the city. Now, whispered the music. Now.
The little boy covered his ears.
“Smiling faces I can see, but not for me” mimiced the crows sweetly.
“I sit and watch as tears go by-”
“Dear boy!” Grandmother reached over and embraced the boy. “Why must you scream?”
“I must quiet them,” said the boy, hiding his woe, looking into the woods.
It was three o’clock. The sky was all sun. Calm, Grandma stood up.
“Should we leave?” she asked.
“Can we go to the stream first?” he asked.
“I feel tired walking there and back.”
“Please.” he pouted. “Now.”
“Did you want to see the minnows?”
“Yes, I want to see if they’re around.”
“The minnows? God, you must be dying!” She took the boy along to the stream.
He helped Grandma walk there. Then he noticed she was more feeble. He stood there listening to the wind’s words.
He heard nothing. He looked at the water past the glints of shattered sunshine, underneath he saw currents to carry minnows. The stream quieted.
There was only a faint, far and fine pattern, where the rivers carried the minnows to their delta. He saw himself with them, only difference being he was in the current of wind to follow a path in infinite repetition.
He squinted, sun from water, water pierced his optical memory again and again at the memory he looked from. He bounced back.
“Look, there’s a big fish; he’s swimming up the stream!” He pointed, ecstatic, to it. “He’s already stopped, he’s looking at us!”
Grandmother looked at the salmon and saw that it was quietly resting. She saw the minnows let the waves carry them to a new bank while the aging salmon’s life was brought to a quiet close.
“There, she let the water take her. Her younglings didn’t choose how she was to go, but they must accept, to move on without her, move with the current, or to rest with the sediment.”
He ate his cookies in silence. “A shame,” he said, without hearing what she said, “A big fish like that, turning belly-up. What a waste.”
“Here” she said, unscrewing a thermos, “you must be thirsty. Finish the lemonade.”
“Thanks.” He drank. He looked into the cold water with haste. He had to keep her here somehow. Without knowing why, he slapped his hands together and said, “Well, I’ll go in the water now.” He looked anxiously at the city and the moon.
“That’s silly child, come,” she said, just remembering it: what he was trying to do.
“Just one more thing,” he said just remembering it: he had to keep her here. “Can we go back and get some more biscuits? I’m all out.”
“Is there anymore in the basket?”
“Yes, last time I checked.”
“I know you tell me your mother is always at work and you don’t see her that often,” she said. “But, okay.” She took his hand, loping steadily.
The boy rushed off to their picnic place, every once in a while waiting for her to catch up. She knew she had to let him go and this was her last day before something was to claim her.
She looked, smiling at the forest’s edge. She kept following the boy, out to what was waiting for her, that she didn’t know, she saw a warm presence.
You can’t have her, the boy thought. Whoever or whatever you are, she’s here, and you can’t have her. I don’t know what’s going on; I don’t know anything, really.
All I know is we’re gonna be here tomorrow at dawn. And tonight doesn’t change anything. So you can go back and wither where ever you were born, city, night, winter, future, or whatever is wrong today.
Do what you will, you’re no match for us, he thought. He picked up a stone and threw it what seemed to be nowhere, until he saw his mother.
Grandmother was standing beside him.
“Oh?” He jumped right back.
“Hey, you alright? You were standing there muttering.”
“Was I?” He was surprised at himself. “Where’s the biscuits? I need some biscuits.”
The thing that stood there vanished. The boy looked out at the city from time to time, eyes squinted, nodding at the town as if to say, “Look! You see? Ah-ha!” He looked at the stone that mysteriously appeared in his hand.
Time Speaks To Us. The End Of Daylight Is Here.
Winter and Night, They Watch Above.
The silence was in shadow.
What extra-influence could reconstruct the shape of such words out of such precise craft?
What was speaking to him?
“It’s getting cold.” She gave him a hand.
They were half way leaving the forest.
“Where are we going! Why leave so soon?”
She turned as if he wasn’t her child anymore.
“Something’s troubling you, what’s wrong?”
“Why we just had a picnic and ate a whole lot-
you can’t walk that far, you’ll get cramps!”
She sighed. “Old wives’ tales.”
“Just the same, you have to think about how things just happen and you can’t help it, do you understand? It’s better to learn to accept certain truths sooner when you’re younger.”
“Ah,” he said dismissing it.
“I guess we could stay a little longer.” She turned, and he followed, looking at the night.
The change came at four thirteen.
Lying on the grass, the boy saw it coming and relaxed.
The clouds had been forming since three.
Now, with a sudden rush, the fog came off from the trees at the edge. The wind, warm, humming the tune of the crows or robins had turned cold.
A new wind blew up out of nothing. Darker clouds moved in.
“It’s going to snow,” she said.
“What a warm welcome,” he observed, sitting with arms folded. “Maybe our last day, and now, this snow, winter must be pleased because it’s clouding up.”
“The weatherman,” she confided, “said there’d be a blizzard all night and go over our heads tomorrow. It would be a good idea to leave tonight.”
“We’ll stay, just in case it clears. I want to get one more day of swimming in, anyway,” he said.
“I haven’t been in the water yet today.”
“We’ve spent the day, having so much fun strolling on this walkabout, time passes.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the city which he started to see.
The fog flailed across clouding the city, hiding it: the city was gone again.
“There,” he said. “The snowflakes are disappearing.” His eyes were animated and young again. He was almost triumphant. “Come again, sun.”
“Child, please, your mother is worried. We must return.”
“Good old sun!” he said. “Let’s put these blankets away. We’d better run!”
She tried to get his attention. But he was preoccupied.
“Your mother will be here soon. You have to realize I won’t be here for much longer.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I can’t take care of you anymore.”
“No.” His face paled. “We have to go home, or we’ll catch a cold.”
“The only home now is out there, your mother will take care of you.” She turned away from the city.
The wind rose, picking up the falling snow.
Marching ahead, the boy headed for the house. He was singing softly to himself, the tune he heard the wind sing.
He halted. He did not turn. He only listened to a voice far away.
“There’s someone, fallen through the frozen stream!” she cried. “He’s sinking!”
He couldn’t move. The wind halted him.
“Wait there!” she shouted. “There’s someone out there! He isn’t moving! A little boy, I think!”
“What boy?” he asked. “His parents will get him!”
“They’re not here! Left without him!” She ran down to the stream, into the wind of winter.
“Come back! Please come back!” he screamed. “There’s no boy there! Please, oh no, don’t!”
“Don’t worry, someone will return for you!” she called. “The boy can’t move, standing, sinking in broken ice, drowning, being swallowed, you see?” she called. “My Grandchild is out there!”
The smoke came in, the snow pattered down, a white flashing light raised in the dark sky.
He ran, the boy after his grandmother,
then the scattering snow from the blizzard rushed against him,
crying, tears rushing from his eyes.
“Don’t!” He put out his hands.
She was lost into a dark fog.
The boy waited under the dying sun.
At six o’clock the sun was shrouded behind black clouds. The snow fell softly on concrete, white fading to grey.
The forest vanished, the city appeared.
It was there, the night, the future, the moon’s illuminated white shining on steel pillars. Among the night lamp streets, looking deep under, A man of his teenaged years saw a boy sink under water. Familiar. The snow globe bubbled and broke. The city was built, destined to replace the woods, like a pebble thrown into water, the reality rang with his thoughts, a part of life quickly lost as found.
Youth. Familiar. Like memories, they’re lost. Nothing to them after they go. The future forgets the past, like night forgets day, like the city forgets the forest; The man in the moonlight saw the boy with a face familiar to him sink into the streets, just lie there, doing nothing. There was nothing he could do. Strange. Disappointing, a vision of the past that clear, after all the years of waiting. What to do with him now? The boy from the woodlands peers into something he can’t see, the man looks back in memory it seems, his eyes stare, his skin pales. Silly boy, wake up! You have to wake up! The boy disappeared, grandmother, the forest with it. The memory? A life once lived? The mind of motherly roots vanished.
He was then released. His mother, concerned called to him. He ran to his mother who was waiting there in the snowy night.
The snow continued to fall, caressing the glass dome. Distantly, under leaden skies, from twilight dusks, a little boy screamed.
A splinter of time appeared and vanished.
Ah-the ancient winter stirred sluggishly in the air-isn’t time like a mother? The past ages and carries him to the future? A daylight dome underneath the night?
At seven o’clock the snow fell thick in the city. It was night and very cold and all the houses along the street had to turn on the heat.