Faithful Pebble
Part Forty-Nine
"Please just save her."
"Please."
"Please."
"Please."
He couldn't get those words out of his head.
"Please just save her."
"Please."
"Please."
"Please."
He couldn't get that word out of his head.
"Please."
"Please."
"Please."
It just kept ringing, banging, tick, tick, ticking in the forefront of his thoughts as he looked towards the night sky. The evening was framed like a shattered window, like crystal shards sprouting silent fingers reaching out to seduce his scattered attention. He stared at it, the wanderer. He stared at them, to be more accurate. The stars rested quietly above twinkling bigger, lighter and duller with every grasp of his hand.
He reached, the wanderer. He pulled. He ascended hanging like a mouse on his clock swung pendulum. From a rope, he dangled. They suspended from an unseen ledge hidden somewhere in the darkness above. The wanderer licked his lips and held his breath. He kept on moving heedful of the ragged end now tied about his waist—their waists—of her breath tickling the hairs along his neck, of Pebble's arms knotted about his shoulders.
Her grip was tight, yet weak, her hood as coarse as it looked, her claws as sharp as they appeared. He tried not to grit his teeth as they dug into the flesh of his biceps, ripped through the fabric of his tunic. The wanderer took a breath and rose another inch. He watched the stars fade slightly away as the murky gloom of the pre-evening sky bled through the well's watercolored darkness. The sky was covered in clouds, in dusk, in the blue-grey red-lined smear of the dying sunset. Yet, that wasn't what caught her attention, Pebble. It wasn't what moved her the most the moment they climbed over the ledge, the moment they plopped to the ground, her on her side, him on his back breathing harshly into the pre-evening sky.
She reached, Pebble, draped in sackcloth, in mud and filth. A black clawed hand abandoned luminous silver for the slight moist dampness, the cool tall sheaths of the pasture nestled around them. Pebble's fingers curled, embraced, kissed the grass and immediately forgot the warmth of the clear crisp thrust of the slick hour hand, the tall straight minute hand, the quick tick ticking of the second hand.
Replaced by the sound of a child's request and a woman's plea, for a moment, in a minute, in the slight slim thickness of a second, so did the wanderer.
All he heard was,
"Please just save her."
"Please."
"Please."
"Please."
And he?
He just did.
Merry Christmas - Calla