Seasons come and go with the year’s swift change. Silver are the linings of the stories they bring, often in the form of long lost memories. Woe befall the weaker minds with no echo of times past. oh the sights we have seen, the things we have done, the lights we have created in others and in ourselves. The sweet taste upon our tongues that in lost time once held a spark of joy.
My memories are like any other, sweet upon remembrance but quick to vanish into the recesses of my mind. Memories are like fishes swimming in and out of reach, but tempted by something familiar. The crisp feeling of an apple between my teeth during the colder months of the year. The snow beneath my boots as I walk from tree to tree picking beads of red from laden branches and dropping them into a woven basket.
Down below, the lake is frozen and my cousins are tossing rocks onto the glassy smooth surface sending it shattering in all directions. In the distance smoke rises from a chimney, telling a story of its own. The stories written in the rings of the wood, in the dance of the flame burning eternal in our minds. One sacrifice for another. I can see people moving about on the other side of the distant glass, so similar to the ice my cousins shatter so carelessly. The great wooden table laden with food we spent the last week making. The great bookshelves filled with stories that would take me a lifetime to learn. The family who loves me, and who I love, moving about in our ancient home, unaware that soon this memory will end and they will all return to their separate stories, breaking off from one another in the woven blanket covering the world that is the story of all things that have been and will ever be.
The first stars begin to appear like rifts to another time before the voices finally call, summoning us all to dine. My basket is full and as I walk back, carefully on my head I place it. Walking on tiptoes back to the warmth. My cousins retreat from the lake, stones falling from frozen fingers.
One step. Two steps. Three, the apples fall behind me. They roll across the frozen ground little drops of color on a snow white world. On my hands I scramble, gathering my shards of story. The doors are open wide, the fires flare beckons me. Up the basket goes, onto my arms. And in I go, into the warmth of memory.
Everyone has a story, and today I share but a shard of mine. Smaller than the shattered ice on that great big lake. Smaller than this memory on the history of the world. My string of fate will meet again with this place, with these people, but in another time. Another story.