The Ending Summer
A Timelines mini-bonus
With a lazy pop, the clock against the sun-dried wall edged from six to seven. The pendulum underneath it swayed in the half dusty air like the leisurely dangle of a feline’s tail. The kitchen that the clock faced stayed motionless in the backdrop of the orange sun though the wooden interior made the atmosphere shine with the thickness and slowness of melting chocolate. Dishes were hiding in their cupboards—still in their siesta—while the silver faucet yawned a drip of water into the basin while playing its favourite past time of stretching the reflection of the room like putty.
The kettle atop the stove had been holding its breath ever since that afternoon’s tea had been finished and remained with steadied breath while carefully watching the light coming into the glass doorway from the outside. Out there—that was where the sun was bidding its evening friends goodbye while the water that plated that great egg in the sky spread out in a vast ocean. The beach behind the home whispered a nightly prayer to the house with the easy repetition of monks and deposited its frothy wisdom upon the serenity of the sands mediating between its vast greenness and the home.
A single figure moved along the edge of land and sea. A towering silhouette etched against the setting sun adding a curved feminine shadow that made even the sky blush a red hue as she passed. Halfway across the stretch of beach allotted for the home, the figure looked back towards that glass door and into the kitchen as if reassuring her friends within that she would not be too long among her more ‘natural’ companions. “It’s good to be home…” she thought to herself quietly while her toes made beds with the submissive sand below. “At least for a little while…”
Dark eyes looked towards the horizon where the sun was beginning its final descent and forced the oceantop to glimmer in golden hues as a final fanfare for its farewell. “Two months vacation,” she remembered someone telling her—yes, she recalled more forcefully, the director had told them that they would begin filming again in two months. Almost all of that time was now over and the dipping of the celestial lamp only reminded her of a summer giving way to time.
She wrapped slender arms around her stomach and squeezed the exposed skin there. The chill of the nightly air was beginning to work its magic on her skin—forming little goosebumps across her forearms. It was time to go back inside. When she turned to make her way back to the doorway, a figure was already standing at the doorframe leaning against the side of the portal with a shirt unbuttoned and parting on either side. For a moment she let herself be caught by surprise by the sight although—after these past few weeks—it should have been quite familiar to her. At first it felt like an apparition—no.. not an apparition, like some waking dream personified. She wanted to pinch herself in some silly girlish assurance that it was reality.
The person at the doorway straightened up when the woman’s eyes made contact with the viewer’s as if sensing her uneasiness. “Are you alright?” was the posture of the figure. “Should I not have—” the body’s speculation went on.
“No,” the woman’s mind interrupted the posture language. She turned and made her way towards the doorway. This would be the last night before they would fly back to the studios for filming and she wouldn’t waste it on silly regrets. The sun set on Ipanema just in time to mask the kiss the woman gave the man in the shadow of the newly born night.