|
Awaiting The End
The night had grown old as the sun waited for the blackened sky to crack. Nudging at the sheet of darkness the worlds ceiling soon became a gradient of colour as the stars faded their way into obscurity and the landscape became illuminated once more. An old man sat wearily at the edge of the oceans shoreline, his face like a book, written and worn, wrinkled and aged. He sighed heavily, his socks and shoes in a bundle beside him he stood up. Lifting his belongings, he edged his feet into the water. The cool sea breeze and the fresh air that only seemed to exist in the early hours of dawn swept across his hair, long and gray it seemed to flow in a quixotic fashion, in an almost unending stream from his head. He closed his eyes and envisioned her, Anara, his late wife. The wind that swept through his hair reminded him of when he was a youth, and she used to run her fingers though it. Once more he sighed as his eyes opened, deep and blue just like the ocean that lay before him. Once upon a time he was a hero, a man of endless renown that, as fate would have it, was not so endless. Now he was a shadow, the crazy old man with tales of lore and legend who the youths would nod toward when they passed him but giggle and titter when he was out of sight. He lowered his head and stared toward the water that rippled around his thin, frail ankles. He couldn't help but think of how life was like a ripple, at the source, at its prime, it was prominent but as it extended outward it faded until nothing was left. Turning his feet swished in the water as he made his way onto shore and back into the town- there he would sit on his usual bench, just by the local store, he would wait for his greetings and peoples inane banter- he would await their caring facade and take some comfort in the fact that at least he was granted that courtesy- the irony, that they cared just enough to pretend to care. There at the bench he would internally recant his glory days, the days when he slew dragons, the nights when he was free and bedded the most beautiful women in the land. There he would sit as he did every day and wait for the inevitable, the only thing he could truly rely on- his own, imminent demise.
|
You can have some rep for that.
