Ebony Tree

Part One

In a room not far from the place she once called home, she laid alone in her bed. The white walls around her revealed the frames of  pictures that once hang, the  lighter yellow with brown the borders of a time that had left  behind, time had tainted all vibrancy - the photos depicting embraces and protective love now living real in memories, no longer visible, no sounds. She laid and said nothing, her lips still sealed.

Still holding the box given to her before departure, in her hands she held it through the years, unopened. The key had been lost while she walked back from the fence where she had waved goodbye - she had stood as watching the horse gallop away from her sight. When the snow had come the in the night it was impossible to look for it so she accepted it gone.

Sometimes while she sat at the window, she searched in grass with her eyes, pretending to her mind she was only looking around. But deep within she longed to find the key she had lost, too weak to walk she surrounded to time.

Her hair grew white and now reaching the floor in perfect order, she delicately brushes it with an ivory comb, made from a great African elephant shot down while the king leisurely hunted with his new wife.  In the mornings before she continues to wait, after leaving the freedom offered by her dreams she recalls a time when she was much happier. Her twinkling eyes tell many stories which now remain engraved on her skin - a perfect map of her life. 

As if by magic that time had stopped yet continued to pass. Lost in thoughts she remains, deep in her soul she hides the best that life once so kindly had given her, living of a past she dared not let go or else it would be lost forever... fall into the darkness of the infinite of things left behind.. and then what would be left of her?

Through the years she observed, the hills far beyond and the changing of seasons adoring the landscape, the trees as they shed their leaves and the wind blew them away, sometimes gently others with fury - lifted them them off the ground and threw them into an air dance of Autumn.

She slowly turned her head and placed her hand in her chest, sighed and rose from her bed. She walked toward the window and sat on the wooden chair next to the fire. She was cold. The unchanged Autumn  was here again. Far into the horizon she set her gaze.


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