My Short Story

I started from my reverie, and the horse twitched under me. We had been going at a slow plod for several days, and the prairie was utterly unchanged. The sky had been an overcast grey blur for hours, and I had been staring at the long, muscled neck of my horse for lack of interesting scenery.

I looked around, and was startled to see that the sun was setting to the west. It was a brighter spot behind the clouds. The clouds had changed as well. Looking to the right, I could still see the featureless grey roof, but directly above were higher, lighter shapes. My mood lightened as I watched the stringy, fluffy bits of cloud wrap themselves around each other. They were bright streaks of almost pure white, next to long inverted valleys of dark inner-cloud. It looked like a giant cat had swiped repeatedly at the sky, and left the clouds torn and roiling. There were occasional patches of blue peeking through the cover, and they became more and more frequent as I looked west, where the sun was setting.

The sun flared briefly through an opening in the cloud, but was covered quickly. The sky was a deep, dark orange settling slowly into pink; the clouds caught the dying light and played with it, bouncing it at each other even as it died.

It was twilight. I unsaddled the tired horse, and tossed my bedroll to the ground. The clouds were still clearing. I was tired from the day’s ride, but I couldn’t bring myself to sleep. Stars began peeking out of the deep, almost black sky. They grew stronger, and the cloud grew sparser, as the sky lost the last of its color. Bits of fluffy cloud still stifled many stars, but I could make out parts of glittering constellations. The twinkling little diamonds sat there in their bed of velvet, little prizes that no jeweler could match.

I looked for the moon, but it was still obscured by the mass of cloud to the east. I would see it tomorrow, I mused, as the clouds lazily departed. I fell to sleep.

Dawn found me before I found it. As I rose the sky was already brightening. The stars were giving up ground unwillingly, but soon they admitted defeat as the blue haze reasserted its position. The clouds today were light, wispy horsetails, still high, but this time they seemed aloof.

I looked around at the grass. It was dark, and it was hard to see the hidden depths at the roots. The dark, lush greens seemed inviting to my horse, which was nuzzling around in a particularly thick patch of it.

The high clouds were already brightly shining in the sunlight, but the sun itself was still not visible. I watched as the dark blue of the sky lightened to an enchanting grey. Light crept up from the depths of the distant horizon, and I watched the advancing line of sunlight sweep inexorably toward me. The first sliver of sun became visible as I swung my leg over the saddle, and I stopped to watch its entrance.

It grew on the horizon; growing there like the most dazzling blossom this prairie had ever produced. The sky around was a bright, almost white, blue, darkening as I looked west. The roof that had shut the sky for most of yesterday was nowhere to be seen, but the last of the stirring, streaked texture greeted the sun enthusiastically. In reds and pinks slowly growing to orange, the clouds set as the sun rose above them.

I watched the sky around for several minutes more, but my horse recovered before I did, and nudged my leg. It was time to go.