Stop

She tapped her fingers and hoped the words would happen. They didn't. She knew the story, she knew what happened next but the words didn't come. She couldn't find them.

The books were sprawled on the floor, pages crumpled. He knew what he was looking for, he had seen it before. It was a not-far-off memory but his search halted.

All ahead stop.

A moment

I walk walls. Dark walls. He sits in the same spot and stares at the road. Grey hair in black night. I watch as he sits. He doesn't move. I pass by. Minutes. Then return. Still he sits.

I leave. Walk my walls. Walk home. He sits.

Follow me

We walk with Abandon, we travel with Neglect and hold hands with Abdication. Desertion waits for us, the fork in the road is highlighted by his form and Forsake lingers behind. Relinquish takes a sip from the stream before he joins, broken trees bow to Rejection and Renouce and the party-pace quickens. We do not meet each others eyes, fear for them what lies in mine and fear for I for what might be found. Stop halts us there, at the fork and the last figure enters.

Guilt holds out a hand and a smile, teeth crooked, he beckons: follow me...

Lens

My eyes are lenses and the world is distorted through them. Each moment is collected, archived by my retinas and sent down the nerve into my brain. Once there they settle and carve out houses in the grey matter. And wait.

Next Stop, Please

The sketchbook is crinkled and browning from use, its covers are in tatters and the gold writing is too far away to decipher. The pages are not used in order but opened at random and spattered with ink.

He uses a brush tipped pen and his eyes never leave their target; his strokes are strong, swift, decisive and taken in with that eye. The eye that he tries to hide from the people around him. That eye, his eye.

He wears no bright colours, nor dark. Khaki greens and washed out greys and the kind of shoes favoured by those who take long walks, an inconspicuous coat and the startings of a beard. He is ordinary, time has etched premature lines in his face. He has the expression of one that does all the watching, he sinks into his sketches as he sinks into the surroundings; no one would watch him, he isn't there. He is colourless. He sees everything.

And yet, in his periphery he is being watched. Blue eyes follow his pen and his face and wish that they too had a note book to scrawl in. Both observers look now to the same face, just woken up and tilting the corners of his mouth downwards. The bottle in his hands is bent and almost empty but he still drinks from it, as if it is a lifeline. Perhaps, it is.

The invisible man stands, it's his stop.

And mine.

Wasteland

Everything is white, the fields, the roads, the pathways, the sky. Everything is covered in the pure absence of colour. Nothing stirs, nothing disturbs the peace that is found there. Only the clouds roam above, their faces staring down at the sleeping wastelands below.

She sails foward, arms outstretched, pulling her cloak behind her. Her flight is as silent as the world below, her cheeks are rosy and her breath clouds the air but she is cold. Her hair flies behind, brittle as ice and her skin glistens, the moisture it may have once had gone. Her pure white eyes stare down at her creation, her season, her time and she smiles a wry smile.

In years past people had asked, begged and prayed for her to bless them with the tiny flakes of her dominion but she had not relented. She could not. But as she sat in her throne, resting between that last rule and this she had heard the other seasons plotting, warming and pushing her out. They were all so different, so separate from her, they all wanted the warmth, they wanted colours and she was neither of those.

There was nothing she could do but wait. She could not act while another was in power. The months seemed to her like years as her plan formulated, wound itself around her fragile senses until there was nothing else and ebbed away at her. Then the time came. Her time, and she leapt from her throne with a mighty cry. To those below it sounded like nothing but the whistling of the wind.

She cast her eyes on the other seasons, her smile moving to light her cold face, and she remained there for a few moments, allowing them to look upon her and think about what they had done. She said nothing as she left them and began her descent, throwing her vast cloak upon the world until everything was covered and no one moved. No one could. So cold was the world that nothing could break through the white, nothing could cry out to the other seasons and even if it could they would not be able to answer.

Her work was done, her frozen dominion created and the others looked on, powerless, as they watched the world suffocate under the cloak of their sister. There was nothing they could do.

Winter rose up and returned to her thrown, looking down upon her wasteland with a sick sense of triumph. This was her prize. This was her place. It always would be. Cloaked in the cold, pure white absence of colour.