The Cranefly Tenant
The low evening sun spills across the sky like wine and vast cornfield tides shimmer in the twilight. I stand on the brow of the hill exhilerated by the silver suspension of the breeze and feel little fatigue despite reaching the end of my journey. Now I can just make out a small house from the road shrouded in the undulating silhouttes of trees. I'm certain this is the place.
A window light is just visible. I hadn't anticipated inhabitants. My pulse quickens with anxiety. I should continue to follow the road into the valley but instead negotiate a dark narrow tree lined path towards the light, kicking stones as my footsteps seem to march ahead of me. I marvel momentarily at my displaced footfall and quicken my pace, following it through the unlocked entrance through cramped corridors up a staircase to a wooden door.
Is anyone here? I enter the very candlelit room I had seen from the road. It's empty. I'm immediately struck by a sense of profound peace. This humble well cared for wooden room with its little necklace draped mirror, floor level bed and delicate single window could withold blasts of starfire and the destructive chill of space.
Carefully sealing the door shut behind me I look to the window overlooking cornfields seething in shadow, the moonlit sky a limitless force of vacancy. The vast nightwinds flying low over oceans of night had come for me but here I'm standing secure behind a fragile weather beaten pane of glass defying them.
They whisper: Leave this place. Stay and you will meet your downfall. Yet I turn away; the tiny womblike warmth of this candlelit room seems an infinitely appealing prospect.
I'm suddenly drowsy, so unburden my small ruksac and recline on the soft floor level bedding in the centre of the room to contemplate my surroundings. Considering its small size I'm surprised by so many apparently locked doors of varying sizes.
A cranefly springs erratically around my head in quiet vibrations. Perhaps it's protesting against my uninvited entrance, announcing its status as sole tenant of this room. I watch it flail in trembling spirals, a miniature helicopter on stilts, listen to the mathematical oscillations of its logic. Until, like the sprung mechanism of an impossibly delicate watch, it spins a coiled trajectory and lands gracefully on the window, as if taunting the night, spreading its limbs like a sacrifice.
A window light is just visible. I hadn't anticipated inhabitants. My pulse quickens with anxiety. I should continue to follow the road into the valley but instead negotiate a dark narrow tree lined path towards the light, kicking stones as my footsteps seem to march ahead of me. I marvel momentarily at my displaced footfall and quicken my pace, following it through the unlocked entrance through cramped corridors up a staircase to a wooden door.
Is anyone here? I enter the very candlelit room I had seen from the road. It's empty. I'm immediately struck by a sense of profound peace. This humble well cared for wooden room with its little necklace draped mirror, floor level bed and delicate single window could withold blasts of starfire and the destructive chill of space.
Carefully sealing the door shut behind me I look to the window overlooking cornfields seething in shadow, the moonlit sky a limitless force of vacancy. The vast nightwinds flying low over oceans of night had come for me but here I'm standing secure behind a fragile weather beaten pane of glass defying them.
They whisper: Leave this place. Stay and you will meet your downfall. Yet I turn away; the tiny womblike warmth of this candlelit room seems an infinitely appealing prospect.
I'm suddenly drowsy, so unburden my small ruksac and recline on the soft floor level bedding in the centre of the room to contemplate my surroundings. Considering its small size I'm surprised by so many apparently locked doors of varying sizes.
A cranefly springs erratically around my head in quiet vibrations. Perhaps it's protesting against my uninvited entrance, announcing its status as sole tenant of this room. I watch it flail in trembling spirals, a miniature helicopter on stilts, listen to the mathematical oscillations of its logic. Until, like the sprung mechanism of an impossibly delicate watch, it spins a coiled trajectory and lands gracefully on the window, as if taunting the night, spreading its limbs like a sacrifice.
posted by Johnny Rem at 8/23/2007 01:49:00 PM
1 comments
