Heather is a tall girl and not actually thin, not as
thin as she looks from up here, with her body probably
keeping warn enough inside her loose green woollen coat.
The thick red waves of her hair are not entirely restrained
by a yellow tartan scarf.

She is pushing ahead against the wind, trudging upward on
a long crooked narrow street through an old-world place
built out of ancient stone, out of weather-battered stones
squared and piled up long ago, skilfully, and by ancestral
hands. Her arms and shoulders are burdened with the day`s
shopping and she is on her way back home, to her most recent
temporary home, that is.

Nearing the crest of a stone-step hill, she turns and stops
momentarily to watch the approach of several skinny boys who
were last observed standing around outside the supermarket
and have been following her ever since. The boys stare up at
her with avid shifty eyes and speak to each other in quick
exclamations, loud and sharp. The sharpest fragments of their
voices are being snatched away by the erratic violence of the
fierce north-easterly winds, so it is actually hard to understand
them. I can almost understand them but not quite.

The boys shiver in their inadequate donated polyester clothing,
huddling together for a collective illusion of warmth. She frowns
thoughtfully as she turns and climbs the last few steps up to the
top. I imagine she is thinking they are like a flock of sheep, but
unfortunately without the wool. They do look something like that.

But at the end of the day she is much too busy and tired to try to
find any comforting words for them, so she hurries along. After a
while, turning a corner and with her back to the wind, she stops
for a minute to take a few deep breaths and raises her eyes.

In the distance the sky, the scudding clouds, the shadows moving
over the low bushes on the jumbled brown hills, are all tinged with
a somewhat mournful shade of purple. Then a bright violet glow
briefly glamorizes the surrounding countryside before seeming to
leap forward and light up her view of the time-worn city.

A black-and-white dog slips out of the darkness of a doorway and
runs swiftly toward the clustered grouping of boys, its head held
low, then angles off and crouches down against a crumbling stone-
built wall close to the bottom of the steps, its tail twitching,
alert and obedient.

Heather has these long straight wings and she can fall asleep on
the wind up here, high above the world, way up here in the cleanest
reaches of the upper atmosphere. Give her wings a good steady wind
like this one and she can happily go to sleep on it, like some people
I know will say they are going to sleep on an idea, even when the idea
is way over their heads... ha ha ha... Oh, sorry. Pardon me. But
anyway it is simply all very lovely. Sublime. And often there is a
certain sound, almost supersonic, unearthly and yet tuneful... it is
perhaps a ghostly skirling of the pipes coming from somewhere over
the horizon... or possibly something or other is singing...

Oh. Right. I`m back now. Here I am. Hello. Paying strict attention.
Conscientiously looking down, diligently observing the earthlings again.
Heather turns and walks away up the road and out of sight. She can be
heard once or twice sweetly whistling for her dog. It`s getting dark
by now and you can hardly see her any more, just a graceful silhouette
now and then, much like two or three other people who are moving among
the cluttered shapes and dim outlines of the old buildings. In the
background, up above the everlasting hills, a few stars are starting
to come out between the wind-driven clouds.

Still perfectly serene and above it all, I am musing to myself while
star-gazing, while many millions of snow-flakes, looking a lot like
a lacy white veil of tiny glittering star-flakes, fall gently on and
over the old town, swirling and drifting around. My eye inevitably
follows them down.

Through the blowing snow and lengthening shadows, the dog`s black-and-
white shape is chasing eagerly after her, darting quickly up the street.
The dog is hungry and cold and happy to be going home. Heather will
already be there, and just about now she is taking off her yellow tartan
scarf in her mother's warm and comfortable kitchen.

I look around for the boys but they have already gone away. They have
already dispersed, have each gone their separate ways by now. They almost
seem to have melted away, you know, except that somehow they have melted
away because of the approaching nightfall, the snow and freezing cold
of nightfall, rather than because of the hostile and directed power of
the sun. Which is really such an interesting paradox...

Now why do I constantly have to be looking down and analyzing each and every
goddamn earthly thing? Heather would never do that, never be so shamefully
condescending.

11/25/2018