There are dreams that haunt me through the day. My waking moments tinted by their hue.
Then there are dreams that haunt me through the years. Found in unexpected gentle touches. Seen through rain spattered windows and heard in the murmur of crowds. Carried to me on gentle Fall breezes or in the first sip of honey sweetened tea.
An obsession I hunt for each night. Slumbered searches for the world that exists in my own head, and nowhere else.
#microfictiony2

The land ran deep in the Clans blood. They belonged to it as much as it belonged to them. The bond made through generations that lived there. Generations that fought for it, died for it.
You could feel it with each step you took there, or each step you took away from there.
Those that traveled far took some of the land with them. Bottled up & kept in their pocket. At the least, a stone from the house you grew up in, & understood they would be buried with it in the end
#microfictiony2 #sutherland

The ancestors walk the halls of Dunrobin. It's become quite crowded. At least that's what Bridget's gram always said. She would giggle at that, but then the Touch came to her too & she could see them. It was quite crowded & noisy. For a while, she hated to visit the family castle, especially the old keep where the most boisterous would be. After a turn she learned to let the Touch fade to the back so the halls where filled with a murmuring fog, & the Castle her home.
#microfictiony2 #sutherland

'The loch is nae place to play, Lass. Many a strong man b'ried 'neath her dep's.'
The girl knew that though. She knew where each one of those men lay. The Loch told her. It would tell anybody who would listen & follow the rules. Into the waves with a song on your lips, right foot 1st, hands empty. Follow the rules & you would always walk back out no matter how long you stayed, no matter how deep you went. If you didn't listen to the Clan rules, the Loch might not too.
#microfictiony2 #sutherland

I let the monster inside me. Now it sits there, pulling at threads of thoughts & making himself bigger. At first I gave him my fears, hoping it would scare him away. Then I gave him my hatred, so he'd know the true me, how horrible I was, how much I hated even myself. He fed on it all. My regrets, broken hopes, saddest days, hollow emptiness.
When those we're all gone, I let him have the happy bits, sweet memories, & quiet hugs until I was all gone & he became me, & I became him.
#microfictiony2

The past has a way of piling up, ready to help us, ready to betray us. This growing mountain of memories, always ready to collapse & bury me.
When I'm buried in remorse & regret, I envy those whose mountains are steady, or who have swept them away in the trickle of time.
Then I think of the days holed up in caves of love & tenderness. Crushed in avalanches of hugs, spring scents, & nights gazing at the stars.
The past has a way of piling up behind us and inside us.
#microfictiony2

I talked to the sprites in the garden every dewy morning. They'd flit away at first, but later they'd come back & listen to my stories of foreign lands. They only ever knew the mossy stones that made the garden walls & nothing farther beyond. So putting the groceries in the boot at the Tesco car park was a riveting story. After a while, I didn't even need to say anything. If I let the memories flow open, they could see them, fast forward & rewind over the details.
#sprites
#microfictiony2

The wind drifted through the window & rustled the papers on the desk. Bills mostly. It drew a sigh from Leah's lips too. She stared as the sun dipped between the curtains & cut a line across the room, bisecting it, separating her from the memories hung in frames on the wall.
A fly buzzed somewhere in the room & the curtains settled, the breeze gone.
Stillness slipped in the room, the fly stopped. But the memories didn't. They flowed nonstop, running through her, cleansing her.
#microfictiony2

The days crumbled to dust & the corners of his mind held little piles of them, blown where the drafts led them. The rooms he went to most had paths smudged through. Weeks, months, years streaked along the floor with footprints near the good times, & the bad times trampled more.
A lifetime of memories, shut in here, haunted by ghosts of Regret, lit by Love's warm glow, & scented by forgotten dreams. All gathered together, waiting for the day the door opens & blows them to beyond.
#microfictiony2

The Days cry, the Weeks weep, the Months sob, & the Years wail. But none of them know the Decade's despair stacked upon themselves in servitude to the Century's sadness. Millennia sits, watches the wave build up, knowing it's coming for her. Coming to flood over and drown out everything else. Ticking by in an inevitable March so she's just another drop of water flooding the Eons.
She asked Time to reach back. To the Seconds themselves, and help them smile just a little.
#time
#microfictiony2

I used to be scared of the woods. I used to think they were haunted. That demons roamed the trails & ghosts drifted through the trees. Or monsters scuttled in the brush.
But I learned, the fear is what I brought to the woods. It's just trees and plants and animals. The demons were what I brought, the monsters my own making.
They were in me.
They were me.
#microfictiony2

The journey is ours. Together we will drift through Time.

#microfictiony2

I left a piece of me in every place I've stayed. A tiny chip off my soul, an imprint of my self, haunting the echos of my foot steps. Some day, the me that started it will be gone, left to fade out the last place I was. That doesn't mean I'll be gone, that I'll be done.
By then I'll have been everywhere, ripples from my being still splaying out. Threads of my spirit wound & woven through the world. So no matter where you go, close your eyes and I'm there with you, all around.
#microfictiony2

She wore the night like a skin tight dress. The stars dancing from her eyes and her skin shone like the silvery moon.
Tourists & townies both stared at her when she passed. They called her the City Goddess & rumors were the place was made for her. Light sucked out of the world so she'd have a place to shine.
But she was a creation of the Night Council. Groomed & decorated, polished & glittered, then set to roam the city, adding light to the Dark Curse.
#microfictiony2 #darkcity

As a tour guide, I hit the major spots every visitor wants to see. Like the dark Nexus in the city center. A 10 meter circle where even the street lights fail & you feel like light never existed.
I give them a little rope and tell them not to go to deep or stay too long. I'm not worried they'll get lost, it's just there's a band of blind muggers called The Bats that will snag an unwary traveler. And I'm tired of my boss passing the complaints on to me.
#microfictiony2 #darkcity

Dusk falls at the city limits, or Dawn depending on if you were coming or going. The streets grow darker the deeper you go with the depths of midnight at the city center. It was always this way, even when it was a tiny village. As the city grew, so did the nightline.
I've always lived here, just close enough to the transition zone to taste a little sun if the mood strikes when I work the tours and guide visitors around. Help them navigate the Dark City.
#microfictiony2 #darkcity

I had a dream that time was full. The cup spilled over, lost minutes & moments sublimating to the void. The time we have was all there is-was-willbe, just stirred around in muddled eddies & whirlpools merging new creations until all that can be will have been.
Soon it will be a homogenized All-Time full of Everything, leaving nothing new or old.
While we sit, left out of the mix in the last little bubble on the rim, a thin skin of what was beyond.
#interstitial
#microfictiony2

I drew a bird & it flew off the paper to flit through the trees.
I drew a mouse & it scurried away to hide beneath the cabinet.
I drew a flower & watched it follow the sun, turning with the day.
I drew a breath & blew out the light, until tomorrow, good night.
#cosopoetry
#microfictiony2

I lose the threads of conversations often enough. Left wandering in the worded woods of disconnected phrases and fragmented thoughts. When I try to find my way back, I'm left mumbling through lexonicon swamps of synonymous quagmires, similar bogs, & comparable marshes.
The compass of inane small talk is my saving grace. It points towards 'how is the weather?' reliably & leaves me a way to move forward. Straight through the meaningless until I find a thread to follow again.
#words
#microfictiony2

The shrine was a tiny one, in an alley between fences at the back of houses stacked on top of each other. Hardly anyone knew it was here, but it was always pristine with fresh offerings set up.
Over the years of sneaking through the alley, the Kami in the shrine became my friend.
He didn't even have a name. He said the shrine wasn't big enough for both him & his name, so he let it free to see the world without him.
So I made the shrine bigger in case it came back to him.
#kami
#microfictiony2