There upon the shore, as gentle waves pooled around our feet, we told one another of how we’d come to wander those briny sands. In time, as our words flowed, so did the incoming tide bathe our hands. Heart beats, wave beats, sighs that stretched to the blur of sky and sea: stories so often yawn out this way. When there is no hurry, no clock of man, nor fear of brutalist lens, the unspooling comes as naturally as the breeze.
Hungry streets and silent lamps meet core-cold walls. Barely a window is whole, barely a roof is watertight. Drip. Drip. Drip. Even the echo of footfalls and laughter is long, long forgotten. I stop. In dappled shade, my eyes fall to the crumbling sidewalk. Beneath an age-bowed tree slumps a long storm bedraggled doll, her eyes scratched, her short arms reaching toward nothing at all. I pick it up, slumping onto a rust-bitten bonnet, the car groan-bouncing in its pools of cracking rubber. Then comes a sterile wind of no aroma, not even floral weeds; how it whistles in the languished way of horror movies. It sings a song of winter's grip, of a world smothered in ice. Abandoned streets, abandoned homes, lives once rooted in mundane stability... How they must long for those dreary days.
As if in mirror-call to the blooms of sister spring, autumn blushed her hearthful hues. Robust greens bowed to these most placid of flames, these tree born butterfly wings.
The cloud dragon had once belonged to another world. Once she had graced the skies of an ice world in another galaxy. Legend has it that one day the universe set her on a new path, one that led her to Earth. All she knew was that for the next few thousand years it was her task to bathe in the clouds and keep watch. She loved to fly in chaotic swirls above the oceanic waves, to inhale the salty air, and listen to the tales of both fish and puffin flock. Then one day every cloud turned darkest grey and beneath them the sea was inky black. Something important had changed.
In a light that dapple danced, bounced a beach ball. Down the pathway it wandered with the gait of a happy child, a bounce and a skip here and there. At one time it paused as if to listen to the song of the early birds, to turn a pirouette, yet beyond that it seemed to have a determination to be a ball immune to gravity. I sat there, my pyjamas billowing in the spring air, my brain all of a tickle with new ideas.
The dragon egg was every colour of fire, and as with fire, they leapt around the shell. Though it had the appearance of raging hearth, it was cool to the touch. Though it appeared smooth the texture was scaly and rough. One would guess, given that it was as tall as a mature oak, that it would be heavy - yet it was not! It could have been carried away by a single ant and bounced around for fun. Yet, that is how it came to be rolling down the hill at a frightful pace and the impact upon the temple walls was enough to hatch it.