Everything that rises must converge
South of Excolo
Recently
Coalescence.
There is a young man working a small plot of land, a very young man, a youth. Night is coming on, the light fading, but he wants to finish breaking this soil for spring wheat before returning home. He pauses in pulling his rough wood ard and wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His shoulders are brown and narrow, wire-muscled and sun-worn.
A gleam from here, a thread from there. Light reflected off dark glass. A curl of smoke.
Behind him a light glows in the window of his new house, where his wife waits in the one big room. They have been married only months, the house raised only this spring. He must work hard, provide for her and the baby that will come in summer. The evening breeze, rising, carries a sharp wild smell.
Somewhere in hot dark the shadows peel away from forest floor. Somewhere high the stars lend thin cold shards of light. The sharpness from the edge of a knife.
The passing of time. Things drawn together.
He rubs the back of his neck, feeling the hair there prickle. Perhaps an animal is prowling, but his wife will have brought the chickens in at twilight. He is anxious, though, in his first spring as a man with a wife and a house. Perhaps they should get a dog.
I -
I am.
And the dark closes in.
Closed
Recently
Coalescence.
There is a young man working a small plot of land, a very young man, a youth. Night is coming on, the light fading, but he wants to finish breaking this soil for spring wheat before returning home. He pauses in pulling his rough wood ard and wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His shoulders are brown and narrow, wire-muscled and sun-worn.
A gleam from here, a thread from there. Light reflected off dark glass. A curl of smoke.
Behind him a light glows in the window of his new house, where his wife waits in the one big room. They have been married only months, the house raised only this spring. He must work hard, provide for her and the baby that will come in summer. The evening breeze, rising, carries a sharp wild smell.
Somewhere in hot dark the shadows peel away from forest floor. Somewhere high the stars lend thin cold shards of light. The sharpness from the edge of a knife.
The passing of time. Things drawn together.
He rubs the back of his neck, feeling the hair there prickle. Perhaps an animal is prowling, but his wife will have brought the chickens in at twilight. He is anxious, though, in his first spring as a man with a wife and a house. Perhaps they should get a dog.
I -
I am.
And the dark closes in.
Closed