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Originally Posted by Sam probably
Okay, this is one of those ‘anywhere/everywhere’ pieces that I just kind of wrote without a particular bearing in mind. In other words, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but it might grow up into something.
And how can you help raise it? Well, honest critiquing is obviously the preferred parenting method, so any suggestions or corrections you have, feel free to post. Not that you weren’t going to anyway.
As previously stated, it’s a pretty aimless piece of writing, but I figured that passivity of it worked in a Spring setting, so that should serve as justification until I think of an actual plot. I guess this would be the first scene of whatever it is I end u writing.
Anyway, have fun… if such a thing is possible.
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“Do you ever wonder what lies beyond the sky?”
Matt hitched himself on to an elbow so he could stare at the speaker. Ellie often came out with things like that, speculative questions which started them off on one of their lengthy conversations; meanderings of the mind that could keep them chatting away for hours at a time. Still, it was a nice day for it.
“Is this a religious question?” Matt asked.
“No, not really,” replied the girl, hesitantly, her eyes still fixed upon the silent passing of the clouds overhead, “I was just thinking, is space all there is; just an endless vacuum of darkness? It just seems, I don’t know, a little anticlimactic.”
“Anticlimactic?” the boy said, absentmindedly brushing some loose grass from his t-shirt. “In what respect? Which ending are we talking about here?”
“You know, the ending. Death.”
“No one knows if that is the end, Ell. Maybe there’s something else.”
“If that were true,” the girl said pushing herself up into a sitting position, “surely someone would come back and tell us about it.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe they can’t come back, or maybe it’s so good that they don’t want to.”
“Maybe,” Ellie replied flicking back a streamer of burnished hair. She insisted it was henna coloured, but Matt just thought of brown as brown no matter what she said. “If there are all these dead people laughing it up in some utopia for post-senior-citizens, then they could at least invite us around too.”
“Don’t worry,” Matt said with a smile, “I’m sure you’ll join them soon enough.”
“Thanks, Matt,” Ellie replied with mock sombreness, finally pulling her eyes away from the slow dance of the billowing vapours above, “you really know how to make a girl feel wanted.”
The pair sat in silence for a while. The springtime sun weaved warmth between the hush of the wind, the scent of freshly cut grass heavy in the air. It was the sort of day that pulled at your eyelids even if you had the benefit of a full night’s sleep.
Ellie gave a gentle sigh and got to her feet, frisking away coils of green with the back of her hand. Matt did the same and they began to make their way down the path of Heatherington’s Hill, a coarse beige snail’s trail gnawing into the surrounding grass. It led them down towards the flat land of the park, a patchwork of coloured rugs covering a well-trimmed underlay of greenery. Groups of playing children roved the grassland, their laughter mixing with the ubiquitous melody of birdsong. Concerned parents watched them closely, albeit a little less fretfully than usual, and chatted amongst themselves, catching up with conversations freshly thawed from winter. It was spring, and everyone was glad to feel the warmth on their backs once more.
“Seriously though,” Ellie said, “do you think there’s anything else out there, or is this it?”
Their sandals made a rhythmic pat against the dry earth, a metronome for Matt’s brain as it set about the girl’s question.
“Well,” Matt began, “there could be anything, couldn’t there? Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
“Can’t see what?”
“You know, stuff.”
Ellie pitched her eyes towards him. “Are you ever decisive?”
“No, not really.”
The pair shared another moment of silence, as if honouring the death of conversation.
Turning to face the way they had come, Matt couldn’t quite understand why the irregular bump from which they had just descended was classed as a hill. It was more like an oversight, a missed spot during the industrial ironing of the land.
There was a plaque embedded into a block of concrete at the foot of the mound, a historical appetizer for trivia-hungry tourists. The engraving was almost illegible due to the overlapping layers of scrawled graffiti, but the occasional word could be made out here and there, like a partially completed crossword. Matt knew how it read anyway — he had been assigned a piece of History homework on the battles of Marcus Heatherington once, and this plaque would have made interesting reading to its marker, his old teacher, Mr Bromley. It told of the Hill’s supposed history as a final standing point against the forces of a local baron—Matt could not remember his name, but he was fairly sure it started with an ‘S’—who thought it would be a good idea to expand his territory into the sleepy village of Wickworth. He had not counted on the presence of Marcus Heatherington, however, a fallen nobleman that rallied the people against the baron’s gang of hired muscle. For some reason Matt had always thought the story would do well as a musical.
Matt was awakened from his reverie by a buzzing by his ear. He brushed his hand through the air where the wasp had been but it had grumpily taken its droning complaints elsewhere.
Ellie had once told him that wasps were always angry because they were eternally intoxicated from eating fermented fruit. He wasn’t sure if she had been joking, though; at best it sounded like one of those pseudo-truths, a fact based in reality adjusted for the demands of showmanship.
Ellie glanced down at her watch, thriftily tucking a ribbon of hair behind one ear.
“Sorry, Matt,” she said apologetically, “I promised Tara I’d help her with her English coursework when she got in, and she’ll be finishing work soon.”
“That’s alright,” Matt replied. Ellie had always had a certain flair for writing, and her flatmates asking her for help was a fairly regular occurrence. “We still on for the cinema tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you then.”
With one last winning smile, she took a few dance-like backward steps before setting off across the field at a jog, leaving Matt to face the miscellany of half-term alone.
Matt thought it was funny how that worked. Whenever he was in college he looked forward to the next chunk of free time, but when it arrived he often found himself running out of things to do, whiling away hours at a time doing nothing in particular. Free time, he decided, was like five-pound notes; as soon as you broke into it, it just seemed to disappear without you remembering what you had spent it on.
He tugged at the tail of his t-shirt, wafting cool air over his heat-soaked back. The sun was great, no doubt about it, but English people were not used to such temperatures. With a small sigh, only partly reserved for the sweltering warmth, Matt wiped his brow before setting off for his house and a cool glass of something summery.
