This begins Blu’s Weekly Serial. This being the first part it shall be followed weekly by a larger part.
From a Mirror All is Clear
Life has rules, winners, and losers, like a game show. However unlike this game show, in life the losers do not just walk away empty handed, or with the home game, no their lucky to walk. But here, now, for once in your life you are going to be given a special scripted encounter. It could be described as the home game, or the consolation prize. Its goal is to show the pride and failure of something oh so not common in this common era. But don’t be surprised if you get more than you wanted.
The sun is setting in its normal spot, and the wind is blowing gently. The breeze creates a cooling effect, which fits in a niche perfectly. The niche made by late, overly warm, summer weather. The heat here is persistently dragging the evening out with its humidity, giving an hour the length of two. You are sure, and remind yourself that any day now the heat will loose its grip, but you make yourself forget that even in the winter, the weather here could just be described as chilly. For a brief moment you catch yourself all most in a jest wondering what this place would look like if it ever did get cold enough. If the sun did get far enough away, and the leaves dry and fall. You are sure that the sight made would make people question the whole hell freezing over cliché. Yes this fictional winter wonderland would be perfect for some creative artist to paint and call it his masterpiece. Just humoring the thought of it moves memories of previous real scenes of home in winter to shame. But unlike your imagination the hot reality of it is that this temperate climate will never loose its sunlight, the trees never will lose their leaves. Even with out the imagination this would be perfect for a brief vacation.
The terrain you stand on is remarkably dry. Its not covered in grass, its one of the only places where you’ve actually seen dry dirt. A majority of the land on this island is covered in tall growing grass. It is the first site here that has been pleasant to both eye and feet. This grass here amused you upon arrival yet now after so long it has outlasted its welcome. The trees also climb high and thick as the grass does, if not thicker. But thankfully they produce the shade with their long thick green leaves, shade that with out it would make the heat here immobilizing. Light on occasion is able to make it through a hole in the canopy. It shoots like a bright beam until it crashes soundless and lies motionless on the ground. Aside from these occasional beams you walk in the shade’s darkness. But with the sun setting, and light becoming impossible unless artificial you will soon be able to cross more open ground.
A group of seven was dropped off on the island with a single mission in mind, with little thoughts of the results other than the light of the tunnel in their minds. You have seen them through all up to this point. The first of your group is a southerner, slow accent, but nice and full of charm. Second was a banker’s son who has aspirations for more than bean counting likes his father. The third was the overly friendly type who tried his damndest to be friends with every person he had ever met, and often made enemies with this drive for friendship. The last remaining three of the group, oddly aside from looks and not being related could have been triplets. All three were descendants of soldiers. Their patriarchs had fought, some had died and from this familiar family background they formed a bond. Each had grown up with an absent father fighting for something. Each had grown up across different towns and territories and called each state they crossed their home. They knew so much about war from their past yet knew little of friendship. War is easier to specialize in. But with their familiar backgrounds they finally found something to bind themselves to another. At meal times or down times if you found one you found the others. Last of the seven is You. You spent time looking at each face trying to remember details just incase. But there were times when your memory’s boundaries, those boundaries that kept the past and present separate, times when they crumbled. You would slip and call one of them another name. A name of someone lost, only found in your memories or in pages of the dead. But your group worked together, like a machine with a purpose even if others had forgotten theirs.
On this small mound of dirt you take a long drought of water from the canteen you filled up five miles back. The memory of that “while back” takes your focus. You had stopped at the creek to fill your canteen and wash the dirt from your face. Your fellows followed you, and did what you did. You looked upon your face in the untroubled water that flowed past you calmly. What you saw troubled you but did not surprise you. In this natural mirror you could see your eyes were deeper set and your face looked a lot older than the last time you saw it. New wrinkles appear where a smile and youth used to keep them at bay. And with this thought back to realizing your body growing older on the outside you begin to wonder about the days and what they brought, how the days affect you, just as this day is starting to end.