The red in the river

The river flowed red between the autumn leaves, and no one seemed to want to look upon it. Isaac shifted uneasily with his arms tucked across his chest, and Max and Mark stepped away with their backs to the scene. Whatever had happened upstream, it was definitely not good. Isaac glanced at the others, but they refused to meet his gaze; it seemed this one was on him.

He stepped cautiously over the ground, each step crunching crisp underfoot. The sun was setting at the bottom of the valley, and everything around him seemed to glow gold, red, orange, and brown; he absently thought how beautiful it really was. It shook him to note that the beauty he was commending came from the decay of the nature around him, and soon the trees would be bare, the sky grey and the air a damaging cold. With a heavy heart his eyes swayed to the maroon tinge spiralling through the river to his right. As he walked, its width and colour thickened.

Darkness gathered around him and still he was walking, until in the hazy half light ahead he saw a shape sprawled across the rocks in the centre of the river. Ah, so there it was. He slowed somewhat; after such a build up, after taking one for the team, his reluctance was really starting to kick in. What if it was someone he knew? What if the person who had done it was still around, watching?

As he drew closer, his heart started to rage in his chest; it was definitely the shape of a person. It seemed as though they had been thrown, with their limbs splayed out over the rocks; the blood seemed to be coming from a wound in the head. From what he could see it was a man, wearing what appeared to be a black tuxedo. They were face down, the head almost underwater, so he could not see if he recognised them or not.

He waded in and checked for a pulse, with the attempt being met with a silence that confirmed death. Isaac did not do anything else to the body, but simply waded back out onto the other side, and sat himself down onto the earth. Forensics would kill him for this – there could have been clues, tracks or footprints where he was perching. But for christ’s sake, there was a man dead. He would sit himself down, because he was human and he had a heart. 

A day in the life of the field of a time

She was sitting amongst the long summer grass cross legged and looking at the ground. The day had thrown itself over the edge of the horizon, the sun the forefront of the crusade, rearing its fiery head in anger at the quivering and retreating darkness. She regarded this as if it were merely nothing – this major breakthrough of nature, this occurrence of magnitudinous strength. Her eyes followed the path of the grass tails as they darted to and fro in the breeze, never content it seemed with one position or the other. Millions upon millions of them swayed in the field – if you were 100 metres in any direction, maybe even 50, you would not have been able to see her at all. But there she sat, like a Pixie of nature, but one that had in her countenance an unbearable sadness that led her to be blind to all beauty.

How long had she been there? It seemed like all of eternity. How long would she stay? That was yet to be decided, and only the decider knew that, and herself, of course. She could move, if she wanted, but yet she seemed almost attached to the ground on which she resided, her palms pressed into the grassy, dusty ground. Where had she come from? She was borne out of nature – everyone was, and nature was where she would die. It didn’t matter from which area she came, where she had been, or what she had previously done – she was here, at this very moment, as it was exactly meant to be.

Hours later the clouds sauntered in – they did not roll, it was slower than this, and much less joyful. They were almost as miserable and as dark as herself. They covered the glorious sun momentarily, and this at last dragged her pretty eyes from the ground, causing her to glance up, interested in a change. Finally, some life in this life – even the very grass seemed to dart faster in answer to this decided moment…but then her eyes dropped again, and all was as it was.

Time passed. Time always passes. There is never a time when time does not pass. A rumble sounded in the summery field – thunder? No, this rumble was more subdued…it was her stomach. She was hungry. She was only human, and a need for things other than one’s own thoughts would put an end to any fanciful notion of stepping outside the realms of humanity. But she did not respond to her bodies protest at her stance…she merely stared on, as if watching an army of ants fight the battle of the Roses. Except of course there were no ants. Just her, the grass, and the sun.

Was she really, truly, to stay here to her death? The sun had reached the height of day and it towered proudly above her, probably hindering not helping her defiant situation. She shuffled around and shifted herself forward, so she was half lying on her stomach, her arms supporting her, her back to the sun. Perhaps in hundreds of years time they would find her skeleton in this position, and with a shiver they would feel the sudden overwhelming presence of her emotion and the strain she seemed to be under.

As the sun sulkily started to sink, melting into the darkening horizon like it was almost unwilling to leave her, she sprang up. Her eyes were wide, her hands muddy, her body stiff and her joints robotic. But she shook not from cold, but from what had happened – what had almost begun to happen. Her eyes went wider, her mouth stretched - as if it had not thought of doing this before- and she smiled. The smile pained her muscles, but it was the most beautiful thing the grass had ever seen, and for their dancing tails she would smile a million times. She stretched her arms above her head, and such sudden movement after so long on the ground caused the world to almost falter. It was unexpected, spontaneous and entirely joyous to watch.

She took to running. She ran and ran, silently thanking the world as it beamed back at her motionful body, and the being that had inhibited that field for as long as this story became a spec on the horizon, where it disappeared, her journey yet to go on.