Young Writers Society

"The beauty of being a writer lies in the finding of something magical in simple, day-to-day happenings."

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His up-drawn hood muffled the evening to a slow, soothing muddle. His footsteps, self taught to relative silence, he felt as tremors through his body, nothing more. It created the illusion that he was simply moving forward without the need to pace: a silent wanderer on an abandoned road.

Not abandoned as in forever, he corrected the thoughts that had shown him a sorry wreck of concrete paving, just abandoned for the day. There's no use for the roads meant for walking in the evening. The dark is easier to dispel with headlights and car noises, with a cradle of metal hurtling and rattling away, efficiently chopping away at the preternatural. Logic over matter, and all that.

His breath drew vapor from his mouth. He inhaled the crisp air, the promise of frost curling under his tongue and coloring his lips with a heart-felt smile. Autumn has a freshness to it, quite unlike Summer's smothering honey. He closed his eyes for a few beats of his heart, imagining the cool wind drawing taught the lines of his face. The tremors resonating from his legs suddenly took on a panicked note and irritated the lids of his eyes to open. He corrected his footfall distractedly.

The pavement lead slightly to the right, he noticed. His eyes found the seam where the road met tufts of browning grass; the approaching street light gently dispatched the darkness that lurked behind, by slow degrees uncovering the rugged line of water that swam under the reeds. He idly wondered what it would be like to lie in that stream, watching the stars flit above as time lost meaning and mud stuck to your back and water rolled around your head and fanned out your hair.

He passed the streetlight and a moment of absolute blackness overtook the space of a wing's flutter, the post's shadow lying across the gray, softly turning road. The tremors carried him forward, over the shadow and beyond the light of the street lamp. He watched his shadow perform a slow, intimate dance around his body, circling towards the light, leaving him alone with the growing grayness. His mouth twitched. It seemed his shadow had a straighter head than him.

The shadows grew closer, then edged away, step by step, only to be replaced by a new anticipation, a new patch of momentary blackness in the future. And every time he passed through the thin, long shadow of a pole, he felt the slight brush of excitement, as if something significant was about to happen. He caught himself after a couple of passes and glanced around him, embarrassed, but not sure why.

A flat plain on both sides. Dead wheat on the fields. The road-road, bisected by the dotted white line, bisected the field in turn. The silhouettes of trees looming in a ragged line where field met forest. The fabric of his hood rustled as he shook his head. He realized his steps had faltered. His hands found his pockets, there in the conjunction of two fields, as he tilted back his head. The stars shone down on him from amongst wisps of cloud. He couldn't see the moon. He assumed it was behind him, where he'd left it with his idle steps.

Whether it was a boon from the coldness or the lack of light, he didn't know, but the stars were out in numbers that evening. His roaming eyes found the Great Bear amongst the multitudes and he promised himself that he'd learn more of the constellations, as if he hadn't made this promise as many times as there were stars in the sky.

He wished he'd have the patience and awe to stare at the starry skies for hours. He wished for little, he realized, but his eyes found the gray asphalt before long and his feet carried him onward, onward, onward. The grays and the blacks cycled, again and again, until the road brought him to the edge of the fields. He had shrugged off his hood at some point, and was positioning it better on his shoulders when he looked back. There was a slight curve to the road, unnoticeable to the traveler, but evident atop the very slight rise at the end.

As he stood there, he wished for a breeze to dramatically ruffle his messy hair or for a flash of brilliance that brought some greater meaning to the stark beauty that was the evening. Now he saw the moon, a flick of wrist atop the road and the fields and the clouds; it was less impressive than he'd thought it would be. His sigh came out as a puff of vapor, his shoulders turning, the beat of his heels veering him right, home-bound.

He walked on soggy leaves mottled with yellow and red bruises. He walked in the light of the houses on either side of him. His shadow no longer danced, resorting now to a graceless shifting as he passed open window after open window. The stars were fading away, one by one, until he could only make out a handful of them against the dark sky. He didn't mind too much; he knew he only had to seek them in the traces of his foot-falls if he wished them back. Autumn was slowly worming its way through the fabric of his hoodie as he hit the final stretch.

The story came to him a few steps away from home, the opening words appearing out of a dusty corner of his mind, and he felt a familiar itch in his fingers. At that, he smiled, his eyes tracking a patch of clouds slowly edging along the dark line of trees. He ascended the three steps to the door and went in.

He closed the door and took off his shoes, kicking them away from middle of the walk-way. A small dog ran up to greet him, a bear the same size as she was tucked between her jaws, her body twisting furiously as her wagging tail threatened to throw her off course. He knelt down, ruffling her fur for a moment. No one else was yet home and the dog was properly ecstatic, bounding about his legs as he entered his room.

He stripped out of his hoodie and jeans, opting for the more comfortable bathrobe, and plopped down into his chair. A press of a button and a swig of water later, an open document lay before him, the blinking, blinking line emphasising the emptiness of the page. It had been a while since he'd last colored it in. His fingers fell into their old rhythm and a couple of keystrokes later he stared hard at the screen, frowning.

My hood

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

No, he didn't want this to be affiliated to him, personally. He hit the backspace and started fresh, the clack of keys drowning out the boring, blinking line.

His up-drawn hood muffled the evening into a slow, soothing muddle.

Much better, he thought, and I smiled.

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