Thought I would shake things up a bit - here is my entry for the Flash Fiction Week #19 - 'Earth':
East is East
A traveller comes across a solitary tent in the great wastes of the East.
Centred in the tent, a woman, garbed in woven hide, shifts sand in between her fingers as if puppeteering. A most unusual act, especially to a man of the South and yet, the traveller sits upon the floor cross-legged and stares.
The woman says nothing, never averting her gaze from the dance her fingers do with the sand. She begins to speak in the tongue of the ancients, in an accent that left the lands a long time ago. Fortunately the traveller was a learned man and knew more than just the modern tongue.
"Grains of sand fall through my fingers, each representing a past or misguided future.
So many things that were to be or not to be,
travelling through the contours of my skin,
briefly touching me yet moving on forever.
Mistakes and memories, potentials and truths,
each are a grain in the desert of life,
each blown away by the winds of change.
All of that potential, slipping through my fingers, like grains of sand."
And with that, the sand finally fell from her hands. The traveller sat silently, mesmerised by the unknown woman in front of him. He felt a bond; strong and hypnotising. However, he now understood that this woman was no ordinary soul – she was the wielder of the sands of time and his was all but up. He swallowed his last and accepted his fate, drawn to her fingers he became sand again, dancing the dance and returning to the earth from where he began.
East is East
A traveller comes across a solitary tent in the great wastes of the East.
Centred in the tent, a woman, garbed in woven hide, shifts sand in between her fingers as if puppeteering. A most unusual act, especially to a man of the South and yet, the traveller sits upon the floor cross-legged and stares.
The woman says nothing, never averting her gaze from the dance her fingers do with the sand. She begins to speak in the tongue of the ancients, in an accent that left the lands a long time ago. Fortunately the traveller was a learned man and knew more than just the modern tongue.
"Grains of sand fall through my fingers, each representing a past or misguided future.
So many things that were to be or not to be,
travelling through the contours of my skin,
briefly touching me yet moving on forever.
Mistakes and memories, potentials and truths,
each are a grain in the desert of life,
each blown away by the winds of change.
All of that potential, slipping through my fingers, like grains of sand."
And with that, the sand finally fell from her hands. The traveller sat silently, mesmerised by the unknown woman in front of him. He felt a bond; strong and hypnotising. However, he now understood that this woman was no ordinary soul – she was the wielder of the sands of time and his was all but up. He swallowed his last and accepted his fate, drawn to her fingers he became sand again, dancing the dance and returning to the earth from where he began.