The grass was greener
20 August 2016
She looked across the battered fields lying scorched by the heat around her frame in veils. From afar came its glint, shining eerily under the summer sun. So infused with more than just a hint of light she felt she should run towards it for it looked so beautifully green, it was almost lime-like in its iridescent sheen. She imagined the dewdrops painting life-like shadows alongside the blades of grass, twirling with these latter in those meadows a long-forgotten dance. She could almost sense the hum of the grasshoppers, the sound of brass invading her mind with their invitation to prance.
An arm brushing past hers tore her thoughts away from that beautiful island and its mighty sway. The field around her was buzzing in glee with grey-faced workers in neat rows of three attempting so desperately to instill some life back into the withered plants going downhill. The water ran from their giant cans dark, muddy and lifeless, not even a spark. She watched them smother rather than water the field as more sand and dirt was all the cans would yield. Here and there some poppies had survived, their wild nature breaking free revived by the view of the skies from the murky lands ties.
It was the bluebells that withered the most. Their head hung, their face downcast, they looked like this time they would never last. The secular trees of themselves a ghost looked over the horizons, a sight only they could boast and realised that perhaps this was the last year they would play host to the hundreds of bluebirds that on their branches found outpost to watch the first sunrise. Suddenly a ray split the skies and onward came rains of the most frightful might. To the field workers they were though the most beautiful sight as they gathered out of ranks not bothering how offering to the rain their weather-beaten brow as it washed away the mud. The oldest of trees came down with a thud and as the land under it drank the rain a damp and soon mossy stance took over its grounds again and again and again.
She looked across the reddened field to the brink of where her sight would yield. She looked back to the moss growing on that new land. Its glint was known to her not a new brand. Both far and near she could see it so clear.
The grass was greener.
Reading of the short story:
Green…The Colour of Evolution – Yakuro
Geetha Balvannanathan's Blog - Isis Tratum