Paramour

The sun rose up to greet the expanse of the green blanket, breaking into a kaleidoscope of colors. As life began to stir, time was punctuated by the rhythmic thuds of metal on wood. The sounds echoed through the woods, waking up all forms of life…Little birds chirped in enthusiasm as they moved in groups, drawing up complex patterns across the pale blue sky. The trees began to hum with the breeze maintaining resonance with nature…The sounds continued to emanate from the middle of the dark green woods. And then, as warm daylight washed over the lands – we could see him, hacking away at the wood with his rusty axe. He was what he seemed to any ordinary pair of eyes – a woodcutter. As he stood surrounded by chunks of wood, we could all see that there was nothing special about the way he looked. I’m sure if you’d been here you’d have said – “Well, He’s a woodcutter who cuts wood”. Aye, so did I till the day his life changed forever…It was a bright and beautiful day, much like the present one. Little did he know of the events that were to follow of that fateful day that would turn the course of his thoughts, the direction of his path…He was cutting wood as usual, completely at peace with himself, glad at being able to hold his axe with both hands and feel the satisfaction that coursed through him each time his axe bit into the wood. If there was one thing about him that is worth mentioning at his point, it was his eyes. He had very bright eyes, ones that reflected a feeling of knowledge and confidence, radiating intelligence. I think this was further accentuated by the fact that the rest of him seemed so commonplace that when you looked at him, the eyes seemed to emblazon the moment. He was chopping away oblivious to his surroundings when the rustle of leaves made him look up. She stood there enveloped in the light, radiating a sheen that he’d never seen before…The aura about her made him stop for a second and stare open-mouthed. He hadn’t come across anything that radiated beauty in so many different ways all at once. Her serene face mirrored a tranquility that seemed unreal…he stared at this lovely creature with whose presence he had been blessed and felt a warmth envelop him that made his insides shiver in excitement. He looked at her unblemished face and was surprised to see a crease on her fair forehead. He was still unsure as to what he was feeling about her, but something urged him on to try and help her….He didn’t even know what he was after but at that moment nothing else mattered. He looked into her dark brown eyes, his own radiating confidence like never before…she looked away for a moment and then she was gone…He waited patiently and when the sun rose the next day morning, she appeared again – unleashing in him another surge of emotions that amazed him… The moment pulled on over several days, but time was not continuous for him anymore…the only times that mattered to him were the ones where she made her entrance into his monotonous sordid form of existence. Then one day, as they looked into each other’s eyes, her face broke into a smile. He felt a pebble drop into the bottom of his heart, the splash blinding him with joy. He stared, lost at her pale clear face with moist eyes radiant with life in communion with the sad but confident smile and for the first time turned away from her feeling so full of emotion that he couldn’t even feel the earth beneath his feet. The next moment she was gone…but all had been said tacit. The rest of the day drifted as in a haze and he was still unable to accept what he had seen in her eyes, in the eyes of his ‘Princess of Light’. It seemed impossible…but yes…he had seen it in her eyes…it was true…She’d loved him too…He lay near the river staring up at the full moon adorned by stars, thanking the heavens for bringing her into his life…It was then that he saw the large lonely moon smiling down at him…He smiled back thinking about how the moon was so beautiful and wondered where it would be if not for the sun…For could the moon serve a purpose if the sun did not shower a dash of her beauty onto the moon?...These thoughts consumed his conscious and as the complete reality of life struck him, he felt his head spin out of focus and his vision was clouded by the stars and the moon before it finally faded away to darkness….

As the sun rose up bright as ever the next morn, an empty patch of woods greeted her in solitude with an axe studded into a half-broken trunk. The breeze blew faster than usual, the birds chirped louder, all of life seemed restless and nature seemed to be drenched in anxiety… The sun shone brighter that day than it ever had, the daylight lasting until life itself was tired of work, and trees sighed, exhausted…Slowly the sun fell away and a melancholic aura was left looming over the lands…

As the stars came out that night, the moon was missing and out came he from the darkest caves that lay hidden in the midst of the lands…battered and bleeding within…His heart screaming in agony…But he smiled a brave smile and collapsed to the floor, for he knew that she was ‘The princess of light’ while he ‘only a woodcutter’ …The moon can never meet the sun…nor can he be a part of she…Thus faded his thoughts into the dark skies while his tears blended with the soft soil on which he lay…

The sun rose the next morning and the birds moved across the horizon making an intricate design upon the skies and a familiar thud of metal off wood echoed out of the woods…