It was the very last days of winter, and the evening crept up on me as I was sitting by the canal that runs through the shabby part of town. I used to work there, and would unwind by the canal as the sun was setting.
I was by a vacant lot that languished between two warehouses, filthy with rotting furniture and piles of crushed Romanian beer cans. But the amber sunlight made it beautiful, painting stone and grass with an orange light as it skipped and hopped along the flowing waters. The sky above me seemed endless, ringed with a line of gold.
As the sun set beyond the shadows of the city, the last rays of light illumined a patch of tall grass that grew on the banks beside me. It lit up like flaxen hair blown carelessly in the summer sun, like the endless fields where I grew up.
I rose from my reveries to head back home, and as I crossed the bridge over the canal I likewise climbed high above the surrounding cityscape. There I could see a world of purple and orange below me, twilight colors that took possession of the drab industrial wasteland.
The shabby warehouses and piles of trash became the vehicles for these daughters of the sun, to transfigure and play with in the free evening. Only a few thin clouds remained in the sky, little tufts of soft pink like on blushing winter cheeks.
The waters were a long patch of blinding gold that extended far away into the horizon, the last remnants of day that still clung to the earth. But it was the sky that dominated all, a vast blue dome that lay carefree and still above the hectic motion of the city.
Though the sun had now sunk behind the crest of the city, the sky smiled in a levity all of its own. I felt as if I was walking far above the clouds of mundane life, in a world of laughing infinity.
*
The way home was a tangle of rotten streets and patches of defiant woodland, the sluggish water of thin canals creeping beneath rusted steel. Everywhere I went there was graffiti, on every wall and dilapidated piece of concrete, even on those few rock outcroppings that defied the urban blight.
But there was also a strange regality on this way that I had never noticed before, as if the whole world was clothed in ceremony on this day of the laughing sky.
The bizarre shapes of graffiti men danced out from the walls of my alley, a dazzling array of colors that seemed to banish the cold. And I felt then the rush of adventure and the call of hidden worlds. It was the excitement I had felt one summer’s evening when I had snuck out from my relatives’ home to go visit the faire grounds.
Everywhere around me I saw the stalls and the tents, foreign faces peaking from behind the colorful cloth. The ornaments of the faire rides rose around me like a city of spires, a kingdom of jesters and thieves.
That same shining blue dome hung above me that evening, and the same twilight colors made everything beautiful. I remembered the burnished orange that shone among purple shadows by the circus tent, where I had pulled aside the tarp to see the surprised face of a clown. I now stood staring at a graffiti clown that grinned amid the urban blight.
*
The feeling of regality stayed with me even after I had left the world of rusted metal and ancient concrete. Passing between the two tall maples that marked the boundary between dead city and living forest, I felt as if I were walking through a king’s courtyard.
The narrow forest path that snaked along the side of the hill was paved with shadows and gold, the last embers of the evening floating past the leafless branches and covering the ground. The stones were draped with thick purples, and the mosses and evergreens of the hill dutifully wore the evening gold among their subdued greens.
The path to the hilltop was lined with trees that stood at attention like soldiers, the heavy mail of their bark shining like bronze. A breeze played among the old leaves, and they fell upon the earth like rose petals tossed from on high by celestial maidens.
Above the playing breeze were the tree branches, which formed the arches upon which the nymphs would drape their summer hangings with the coming of spring. Hanging over this kingly way was the ever-blue vastness, the great smiling dome of the sky.
As I reached the crest of the hill, I could once more see the urban blight stretch out beneath me. From this royal forest palace the city looked like a melancholy graveyard. The shadows now darkened the gray surfaces, the buildings looking like little tombstones ringed by black footpaths.
I could feel the nymphs and the regal tree soldiers look at the urban graveyard with a forlorn sadness. It was as if it were the place where the memories of the forest go to die in every autumn, when the leaves float on the cold wind down from the hill to rot on the street, their green life spent.
*
I left the mourning trees and continued on my journey, passing between rocky outcroppings and dormant blueberry patches as I descended into the valley behind the hill. Here the wind was still, and the last rays of sunlight had not banished the cold. On the purple rocks and evergreen trees was a twilight sheen of frost that glittered under the still-smiling dome.
Though the shadows of approaching night were closing in on me in the valley, and the winter cold was hounding me, the frost made the forest seem like a gallery of wonders. Every crystal of frost glimmered and laughed like the heavens above, reflecting the blue and purple with every step I took.
Despite the trees and the rocks closing rank around me, I felt as if the evening sky itself was present in every nook, and all I looked at held the vastness of space.
My descent ended by the mirror surface of a small lake, tucked away among the folds of the forest. No trace of the honeyed sunlight remained in the sky, only shades of blue and purple. A force like gravity seemed to pull me towards the waters, and gingerly I stepped out onto the thin lip of rock that jutted over the lake.
There was infinity both above and below me, the sky mirrored perfectly in the still lake. But as I found my footing on the frosty rock, a sudden stroke of vertigo hit me like a glass of absinthe. My feet felt naught but infinity, and I hurtled cold and breathless into the laughing sky.
*
The glittering purple forest seemed to spin around me as a moment of eternity came and went. I could not tell in which direction I fell, whether it was towards the heavens or the waters, for sky and lake had seamlessly joined. The perfect image of the laughing sky had come to life on its own in the waters, and all that remained of the world was that deep blue immensity ringed with evening purple.
There were no longer any rocks or trees, no rotting streets or languishing lots, neither graveyard city nor kingly forest. Not even the stars were there, only that laughing infinity and the man who had so carelessly fallen into it. But as my own mind ceased and became the very sky around it, something appeared in the far distance.
It was like a sickle of silver that cut through the blue space around me. So sharp was its outline that I half-expected it to shatter the sky, shatter it like the mirror surface of the lake that had vanished into it. Though no thicker than a thread, the curving light stood out as the only discernible object in view.
I fixed my eyes on this silver cut, and as I did so the world ceased to spin. It was as if the formless sky took shape around me, clothing itself in the forms of the forest.
From the evening purple the trees emerged once more around me, and with them the frost covered stones and leafless bushes that shone in twilight colors. The sky split apart to reveal the mirror lake beneath, and its own towering vault above. The lip still jutted above the lake, and I still stood upon it. But something had changed in the image, for it was not quite as I had left it.
Then I saw it.
Framed by the trees and the cliffs, touching the ground on the mirror surface, was the form of a colossal man that had emerged from the very nature around me.
He sat cross-legged upon the still surface of the lake, wrapped in purple silk around his waist. His hands were extended on either side of him, holding up the tree-covered cliffs with effortless strength. His skin was a shining blue that defied the cold, for his bare chest was the indomitable sky itself.
And perched among the pink tresses of his infinite brow was the curving moon, shining like a crown of stars.
This being so dwarfed me that every thought fell silent within me, replaced by an awe matched only by his perfect serenity. And then, through the silence, I could hear his primordial laughter ring through infinity, sounding through every glimmering speck of frost.
Here was the laughing king himself, the immeasurable vault of the sky, the Lord of Twilight.
I thoroughly enjoyed this read! Your writing style is unique and gives me nostalgia for something I never experienced. Beautiful, keep it up :)