On the gently-sloped hillside, in a grassy glen, he rests his weary frame. He can feel his weight melding with the ground as the heat of the day is gently coaxed away from him by the cool earth. The wind sighs. He sighs back. His restless fingers feel along the ground, and brush a smoothed boulder. With practiced restraint, he resists wrapping his hand around it and forcing it from the ground. There was no point in disturbing the nearby creatures for the sake of his restless hands.
He runs his palm slowly over the smooth surface.
It was so perfectly shaped for fidgety fingers... Alas.
The moon stretches just over the mountainsides, yawning. She languidly watches the sun’s last amber sheets pull themselves slowly across the horizon. He watches as well, from his hillside bed. He can see everything. Dressed in milky purples and blue, the mountains sleep on the horizon.
He sighs, and silently wills himself to sit up from the earth. It is so cool and comfortable, he almost can’t. But, he manages. The absence of the cool earth on his back leaves it feeling warm and prickly. Though just as he considered laying back down to rest again, a chill breeze gives him respite, and earns a weary sigh. He looks curiously over his shoulder... surprised to see that this spot had not adopted a vague outline of his form, yet. Perhaps the earth would cave under his substantial weight one day. Or, perhaps it was sturdier than he gave it credit for. After all, did the earth buckle beneath the mountains? Surely not, he thought.
Another winter-whispered wind mutters through the trees, guiding his gaze outward. The flat lands cradled between the peaks stretch for as far as the eye can see... and there, lay his treasure. He felt a dull tug in his chest that felt as though it would pull him straight off the mountains, toward the expanse he ached for so strongly. There, in the distance, glittered the lights of life in over-abundance. Lines of white and gold trickled over the land, stopping and starting at their funny red and green signals. He could see stretches of bright jewels beckoning the night-folk into their usual nocturnal hide-aways and revelries.
It all shone so brilliantly. Funny, how the lights of a city could look so much like glistening gems spilled across a velvet-blue floor.
He feels that familiar, longing smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Today wasn’t the day. So often, he’d tell himself differently, and swear to the stars that ‘today, I will see them. Today, I’ll walk among the gems and meet the people who make them glitter in the night. I’ll carefully step over their cars, excuse myself to a vacant lot somewhere, and draw a curious crowd. I’ll hear their funny little stories, watch them walk to and fro around me- maybe I’ll even get to hold one before saying my farewells and vanishing back into the mountains...’
But, he supposed... that was alright.
So long as he could sit upon his hillside perch, and watch those glittering lives from above... he supposed... that was alright.
There was always another day.
