Part 19

It was the sound of thunder that made him dream of his horses.

As he wandered endless deserts, sleeping under the countless stars, his horses would leap and kick high into the air when he would call their names in his dreams.

White horses pouring over waterfalls in mysterious green mountains.

Black horses boiling up from the flames of a burning earth.

Yellow horses sparking lightning from their prancing hooves.

Spotted ponies rearing and fighting in the snowy skies.

Red horses stampeding over the horizon chasing the setting sun.

 

The skylines of towering concrete disappeared into the skies in some nameless city, and always his horses.

A single pair of tracks on a dry creek bed leading into the maw of the earth, and always the horses.

A playful fox, yipping and jumping, bounding after falling stars across the night sky, pausing because he hears the horses singing.

A day dreamer at the edge of the earth looking towards home where the horses dance for him.

 

Her smile disappeared from her red lips when she realized she couldn’t catch up to him and his horses. She watched as the rain came from the west riding a beautiful blue horse that lifted his legs high. The smell of wet earth was overpowering as the desert bloomed behind her.

Rain stopped and grinned.  Her long black hair that touched the ground was adorn with flowers.

She smiled back at rain,
You will never catch up to him, you will never catch up to my love and his horses, she spoke mockingly.

Rain just smiled, and her blue horse pawed at the ground before leaping away. The soft buzz of rain and life followed them across the sands.

She stood in her library in the desert.  Alone but smiling in her red dress.
He always comes back, she said as she opened a thick book and with her other pale hand, swished her glass of red wine.

Above her, a massive cyclone formed and just as quickly dissipated back into the clear night sky.  She pretended to read, but the reflection on her dark eyes revealed the lightening and storms  on the distant horizon…

part 15

From space, Fox could see the glow of the water people in the sea below

The milky way gently splashed against the black outline of an unknown shore. Galaxies and lonely stars danced and swirled silently among the vast unknown currents. Every so often an unknown behemoth would rise from the deep; a fading shooting star marked its silent passage on the surface before it sank into the depths.

Her toothy grin floated among the stars, a constellation that skirted to and fro on the water.

A young fox, stared into the still waters of a stock trough in the desert. Pondering how such small creatures could survive under the waters. He reached out into the water, slowly as young Fox practiced when he dreamed a thousand times that he could rearrange the stars in the sky. The water skate slipped between his fingers and swam laps around his hands before mockingly darting to the other side of the trough.

When he unfocused from her smile, he saw her below floating on the currents in her Baywatch bikini. Her pale skin gleaming like the moon, the stars fled in her presence, falling stars darted away as even the water monsters from the depths below left their glowing trails on the surface of the black ocean.

Come with me, my love.

She reached out with her thin arms, reached out far into space where Fox floated in the darkness.

Instinctively Fox stretched his arm to help, but realized to late who she was. The atoms on the tip of his middle finger barely touched her glowing white skin, and she engulfed him. Her long black hair wrapping around his gaunt body as she pulled him down to the black ocean. His screams broke the silence of space as they fell, her laugher echoed in the infinite distances between the planets. They tumbled endlessly, Fox unable to break free from her grip.

After a thousand years they splashed into the black sea.

Fox lay in the sands gasping for air in the cool morning calm. His angry father was just beginning to stir on the horizon and the sky line began to waver and dance as oil on the cast iron pan his grandmother gave him began to sizzle.

She glanced inquisitively from her lawn chair, looking over the top of her big sunglasses.

Did you dream well my love? She smiled as she put down the expresso she was sipping.
Fox closed his eyes, but they were covered with grains of sand that hurt under his eyelids. He had no tears to cry, no sweat to dampen his skin, to relieve his dry lips. He could only roll over and look away from her, and try to think of cold water, cold beer, the thunder of his horses before the spring rains..

Part 14

Fox tried to bury his nose into the cool sands to escape from his angry father in the sky, but the ground was frozen. All around him, the desert waves, whirl pools, currents, were frozen in time. The sands crested high above him, but remained motionless, except for the dance of shimmering heat.

He tried to remember a time without sand, without the desert.

Five lifetimes ago, Fox and his brothers roamed the earth, their horses thundered across the deserts, leaping across canyons, prancing through creeks, leaping high over distant mountains. Young men, they would thunder out to the edge of the sand dune sea and stare off at the fiery frozen waves of sandstone.  They strained their ears as they listened to the silence.  They spoke quietly to calm their wide eyed horses.

Oceans they would call it.

A child of his peoples lands, he had never seen or heard the ocean. He was lifetimes away from plunging into the cold north Pacific, the water people embracing their lost son touching his long hair and crying over his scarred body. Fox and his brothers could only close their eyes and pretend they could hear it. Roaring , crashing, singing to them to come to the west and bring their corn pollen. They watched the sun set on many long desert evenings, until only Fox would come to this place and close his eyes, as he stood on the crest of a frozen wave.

Where are you my love?

Fox slowly opened his eyes, and for a second, saw himself as young man in the reflection in her eyes.

Welcome back she said. She smiled and waved her hand at the towering sands, and they began to flow and boil again.

Fox looked away, her pale skin was blinding under the shimmering sun.
There was no east, no north, no west, out here. He just picked a direction and stumbled off.

Somewhere there was thunder…