Five Sunsets Over The Ramparts - 500 word story

The Sun swatted its interrogatory disc from the face of the earth and gave a clipped nod. As Night stepped forward, the wrinkled penumbral clouds of its rolled up sleeves exposed the warrant of its dark intent.

The Sun had completed its final round and was coming off shift. As it dipped down into the trench of the horizon, it paused to lay a ribboned shaft across the arm of Night arriving in relief. ‘All quiet today, but it’s all going to come down on your watch, it’s palpable in the air’. Night nodded curtly and grimaced as he started his vigil. 

As the Sun sags and droops at the end of the day, it no longer has the power to illuminate the sky with its glow and drags its fading light like a soiled wedding trail through the dust. It feels guilty that the sky is leached of its cerulean and azure, to be but briefly replaced by reds and oranges and bruised purples. A similar purging of certain colours as was happening down on the ground too, as flags of one colour effaced flags of another, until Night descended rapidly to shroud it all unseen beneath its black cloak. 

The Sun gazed upon the shoulders and torso of the blue sky which cradled it. All day the blue had been permeated by smoke trails launched into it, profaning its unbroken blue plane. They looked like trails of tears. But as the sky gyrated and sloughed the Sun off like a robe to step out of its raiment, the Sun no longer cared since it would pass over to become Night’s concern now. Though as the clouds pressed themselves hard up against Night’s bosom so as to become sheer, so the smoke trails too failed to scar his dusky countenance. The pent up perturbations were far worse when they finally fell from his tenebrous countenance and fell to earth, since the whole sky lit up with coruscations. As if in fierce tribute to himself, mocking the radiance he brought during the day with brief fulgurations, before they were enclosed and eclipsed by the darkness once again. 

As the Sun set on another day, it shook its head sadly in the knowledge that when it rose the next morning, there would be nothing left for it to kindle and shine upon to light the way in this place. Night had triumphed over it yet again with its perpetual extinguishing of life. 


*

I wanted to write something to express my disgust with the international just standing by while innocents die in gaze in utterly unjustifiable numbers. I was trying to go for something on a global scale and decided to plump for the sun and the darkness of night, with all the associations of light/dark these bring. Our words Orient and Occident stem from the Latin for sunrise & sunset, while the term 'Levant" comes from the French also referring to the rising sun. Additionally the terms Middle and Far East show represent the vestiges of colonialism that these parts of the realm were only defined by their proximity or otherwise to the powerful empires of Britain & France. These imperial powers caused the long embittered entrenchments of communities in the Middle East and now they sit on their hands unwilling to try and seek both immediate and long term solutions. I blogged on the root cause problems behind the situation in Palestine back in 2012 and nothing has changed only worsened. If they manage to sort out a cease fire, unless they deal with these deep-rooted problems the region will go through all this again in a short while, just as I said it would back in 2012. 

Three Eclipses - Friday Flash

The geisha strummed the three strings of her shamisen for her Samurai master. The instrument's body encased in catskin that held the sweet vibrations like a purr. Its silk strings fashioned of the same material as the kimono in which she was draped. Three ivory pegs chorusing the hairpins shaping her high chignon hair. The three strings rubbed against one another to conjure up the sound of a whole hive of bees. The plectrum caressing against the body to conjure the rhythms of the hooves of her master's horse. Her fingers palpating the frets to make the instrument sound like sweetly dripping honey.

She was his flower in the pleasure quarters and his willow throughout the rest of the house, as she fed his soul with poetry, dance, calligraphy and grace. At night, to preserve her elaborate hair pinned with turtleshell, she slept with her head on a block and a bed of rice around its base to alert her, were her crown to roll off the wood.

Then came the American bomb clouds that momentarily blotted out the sun and stripped all the leaves from the trees. Those birds not in its vicinity, till crashed in their flying, as they conceived night had descended. The bees disappeared. Turtles retreated inside their shells never to resurface from their hibernation.

Now her silk kimono sat uncomfortably. She could feel the silk writhing over her body, as if the worms sought to reclaim their cocoons for their unborn broods. The shimasen's silk strings came away from the catskin body, as they too protested their indenture. Her master took his pitiless steel and rendered Seppuku. His insides unravelling like the insurgent strings on her shamisen. Her tresses escaped their turtleshell grips. No more of flowers and willows. A perpetual winter had eclipsed Japan's ever rising sun.

The silhouette of an American GI stood behind her shoji. He slid the screen door back, his bulk dimming the whole room. Save for the corona of light from the burning tip of his cigarette waxing and waning as he breathed heavily. Try as she might, she couldn't convince herself that it was a firefly in the night attracted by the scent of her hair's pomade.

Taken from the Flash Fiction collection "Long Stories Short" available on Amazon Kindle