Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Sightings

Her image cannot be captured on the glossy surface of a photograph. It will only appear as a pale, shifting shadow and within the blink of an eye, all the blacks and blue greys simply slide off the paper and float away on the air. Some intrepid souls have enjoyed a modicum of success with a sketch, hiding within dark thickets of pine with their thumbs pricking, charcoal poised over tablet, squinting in the mist, waiting....waiting..... but the majority only find themselves so stunned at her sighting that they are unable to breathe, let alone to attempt a rendering of her countenance upon paper. Abhorring crowds, she will only appear to the solitary witness, therefore making the paltry accounts of her presence unsupported and suspect, and altering that witness till the end of his days. Mercurial and wayward, she is thought to show herself only in the last two weeks of October, sailing along through a chilled moonlit night, but as mentioned, few have owned the certain type of bravery required to wait all alone for her appearance as she soars past, high above, on the mane of the wind.
The sound of her laughter, high-pitched and hair-raising, has been said to raise from the dead those bent on mischief and mayhem in the cities of men, and her visage, admittedly extreme, has long been thought malevolent, but who can say for certain. Her antipathy for canines is well documented, but she does seem to be charmed by the felines amongst us, making them comfortable in her uncharted stone castle, hidden deep inside the thunderclouds.
The time is nigh for her sightings to occur.
Watch for her if you must, but far better I think, to sit by the fire and read of her exploits, words written by others no longer able to write, their thoughts forever doomed to wander one lone memory of a cold autumn night.