The town slept in a valley beneath a twinkling sky. The mountains stood stalwart and still, and only a single gust of wind blew down their rocky slopes, carrying the invisible blanket to swathe the night in silence. The crickets did not chirp, the frogs did not croak, the birds did not sing; the earth merely whispered to grasses, flowers, and trees illuminated by a pale moon.
Clap. Clap. A cloud of soot rose from the miner’s blackened hands. With a grunt, he sat down on the hard ground to dig into his lunch: salt pork with bread and beans. His legs ached and there was no feeling in his arms, so the food was most welcome. But as he began to dig in he noticed he felt more tired than usual—it was difficult to keep his eyes open. He watched the long shadows cast by the lantern light dance across the shaft walls. It helped him keep his eyes open and reminded him of how much his daughter had loved his shadow puppets as a baby.
As he drifted into sleep, he thought he heard the foreman shouting something about grass. He thought he heard other voices shouting his name, but it didn’t matter. He was tired.
When the thunder sounded, he was dreaming of his wife’s freckled face.
The sauropod struggled against the bog’s inexorable pull. It trashed its huge body about, flattening the ferns and foliage about it, but all it otherwise succeeded in doing was exhausting itself and sinking further into the mud. It gnashed its teeth at nothing, wailed for help that did not come, and sunk deeper, deeper.
When all its strength was gone, the creature looked with beady eyes toward the thousands of lights hanging from the dark sky. No understanding came to it, but the sauropod felt overcome with some strange calm. Its eyes stayed there, its barreled chest rose slowly with shallow breath. The stars trembled on the surface of the water that rose to drown it.
September 10, 2021
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