Withering Away

The Nymph's Eye was filled with stars, and they hung like the beaks of comets over the sea of grass. It was a world of starry deeps, where the darkness of earth had been loosed; the light of day had no hold. The air was sweet and warm and balmy—like an evening in early summer—and there were flowers and trees and all manner of things growing in the great open plain; even the very grasses waved in the breeze. But they were all dead to me. I saw them only as things that were dead.

I saw no man nor beast—I saw but trees and flowers, and heard only the wind and the singing of the birds.

It was the time when the last flowers of spring were dying. There were wisps of green here and there amongst the browning grasses; the leaves that remained hung limp on the branches with a sullen sense of dejection. It was a dank, wet kind of morning—a world where rain fell heavily at night and left the world dull and heavy the next day. And it was still growing dark when I awoke.

This was the time when the earth was giving up its dead; a season of great changes; and I knew that things would never be quite the same again.

As I lay in my bed I looked out from my window upon the dusky land and watched the dark shadows roll across the fields. And I remembered that it had rained during the night—that the ground was soft and soggy—and I felt the dampness against my face and welcomed the sensation because I knew, once the soil on my surface had shriveled to its end, my end will swiftly follow.