The sun yawns up from the night below and puts the world in a pinkish maze of shadows. It sets the soft gradient of the sky; high above, the deep blue of space slowly melds into the rose-quartz wash of the bloom above the horizon and the sun eases up the middle like a bolt of molten ore.
The man rubs the flutter from his eyelids as they flit in and out of wakefulness. His jaw clenches and unclenches. His hand runs down his face and feels the rough curl of his beard. With that, he is back into consciousness, blinking back at the star that faces him.
The land wobbles, unsteady on its own axis. A low stretch of land slopes up to the rise and fall of hills all across his vision. The trees are mottled in the autumn wind. They speckle the land with crisp oranges and reds. Between them, the almost-black of evergreens stand out stubbornly between their deciduous cousins. Around him, the grasses are twitching in the breeze. Their green-gold stems shimmer between the delicate buds of wildflowers, which channel a rainbow through their roots and out unto the sky.
All of this is softened by the radiation of the sunrise. A muted varnish coasts the land, assembling all its constituent parts into a more uniform palette.
The man is sat up against the tree that guarded his dreams. He rubs the ache from the muscles in his shoulders and neck.
There is a whip-and-crack in the distance. It bellows out and announces itself across the valley. The gunshot is so distant, it doesn’t even startle the birds, who are concluding their morning rituals.
The man feels around the trunk of the tree for the polished wood stock of his rifle. Its form is cooled by the night and not yet warming like the rest of the world. He places it across his lap, leans his head back against the bark of the tree, and braces for another day.
Paddy Dobson
19th July 2020