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This High Plain
A little something that came and went. I'm not sure what to classify it as. An exercise of sorts.
This High Plain
The wind swept across the plain and sent shivers up the girl's spine
as it tickled her bare feet that dangled from the tree limb. A single
tree sitting alone on a high plane nestled the young girl as she
drifted into a world of her own design. The sun was setting to the
west and the geese overhead flew to warmer climes. Her imagination had
always gotten her into trouble and the folks of this small country
town never even noticed her. Her life had been one of solitude, well,
mostly. She had always had a single friend. A quiet boy. The boy had
always been there all her life but hardly spoke, in fact he didn't say
a word until the age of six at which point, to his mother's amazement
he spoke a single word, "dream".
The boy and the girl had grown up lovely; two beautiful children
became two beautiful teenagers. They were inseparable. At their
current age most assumed they were lovers but never had they found
their way between the sheets. They were companions, friends and more
importantly non-existent. These two young people were not real. The
girl did not really dangle her feet from a maple tree on a windy
winter evening and the boy did not really walk up to join her in her
musings, but we'll pretend they did.
"What are you doing up there?"
"Thinking."
"Thinking about?"
"Thinking about thinking."
"What? How can you be thinking about thinking?"
"I don't know, but I'm doing it. It's really kind of strange. I lay
here and I think that somehow I'm thinking. It's an odd thing,
thinking."
"You're an odd thing."
"Did you see the geese?"
"Yes."
"Where do you think they are going?"
"Guatemala."
"What, Guatemala? How do you know that?"
"I read it in a book."
"I wish I could fly."
"Flying wouldn't be fun."
"How do you know? You've never flown."
"So."
"So, if you've never flown then you wouldn't know what its like to fly."
"I know it wouldn't be fun."
"I think your just no fun."
"I'm plenty of fun."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah"
"..."
"..."
"Well?"
'Well what?"
"Prove that your fun."
"How?"
"I don't know, um, start flying."
"But flying isn't fun."
"..."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Get quiet."
"Why not?"
"It scares me."
The two would talk for hours on end, for days on end but never really
said anything. Their eyes would cross and glance away. Something was
always building, something lying beneath the words they spoke. Another
thought, another word unspoken.
The boy climbed the tree and sat beside the girl as she stared at the
leafless branches above. Her blue eyes staring past his and into a
world that no one else could see, a world that didn't exist at all.
Two no ones sitting somewhere speaking of nothing on a high plain at
the edge of nowhere, words drifting between them painting a picture on
the canvas of silence. Meaningless words between no ones. The girl
jumped down from the branch and began to walk, the boy followed.
"Where are you going now?"
"Nowhere."
"You can't be going nowhere."
"Why not?"
"Because you have to be going somewhere."
"Nowhere is somewhere."
"No it isn't."
"Why not?"
"Because then it wouldn't be nowhere, it would be somewhere."
"I like you."
"Huh?"
"I like you. Your funny."
"I'm not funny, I'm serious."
"I wish we existed."
"Why?"
"Because then we would be something."
"But we are something."
"What are we?"
"Words on a page. Brief moments in a writers mind that will pass as
the words are finished flowing."
"I want to be more."
"What more do you want to be?"
"Real."
"We are real, for now at least."
"No we aren't, we are nothing. You said so, we are just brief moments
in someone else's mind."
"But, isn't everything just a brief moment in some existence?"
"Yes."
"So what is so wrong with just being what we are."
"Because we are not being."
"I am being. You are being too."
"What are we being?"
"Wasteful."
"What, how?"
"Because, this story is over."
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