The shadow mountain was ringed with arrows of light, as if heaven's archers sat upon the graphite clouds. It's ragged feet, usually a sullen grey, bore the dance of gold with the good humour of a vampire. In the early light, amid the rising vapour, they knew the calling hour had come. This is what they had trained for, this was their destiny.
The blue light fell at the end of the day, washing greens to their softest hue and raising purple’s to their most vivid. Even the clouds that had been white an hour before were an enchanting steel blue. With the golds of the dawn and midday banished, all that was left was for the sky to wash black and herald the return of the moon. So we sat there, Earnest and me, feeling the cooling air that ran the valley floor, resting our limbs and feeling our heads prepare for a dream-filled slumber.
Train track, as earthbound ladder, absorbed the wide and generous curves. It’s clickety clack was the sweetest of rolling belly laughs. Maple clouds giggled in the sky above with a smiling cherry sun. From birdsong to the whisper of evergreens, the air’s ambiance came as a soul-wink. Mischief was in the air. One could taste it, feel it, from warming marrow to growing smirk. Something gloriously funny was afoot.
Only the fingerprint of a fairy queen can make the magic flute sing. Without her, though it plays, its sound is the same as any other silver yard. Centuries have come. Centuries have gone. To the English heart it holds equivalence to the sword of Arthur. And so, when we heard its tune and felt its magical surge, we held our collective breath. Could it be true? Was this it? Had the fairy queen returned?
“Rock is cleaved not by storms thrash, yet by aeon’s drip. On and on, on and on, on and on. When time is measured this way, by the micro-erosions of water’s strike, it is the slowest of blades. That is the power of water, for good and for bad. So take care, lovely Cleo, that what brings you to sculptured form is born of sunlit ponds alone.”
In a sigh of lamplight, rain drizzled down the hill. Damp. All was so very damp. It would take a magician grander than I to conjure heat from the shivering cold. The air was a scrooge, stealing warmth pennies it needed not. Eyes could not plead with city smog. Even the nightingales only leaked a slow lamenting warble.