Tales from the edge of the morning sky

Paul Morris

A selection of stories and tales, mainly about the natural world, our place in it, as well as stories about everyday people who change their lives and others by being different or perhaps by being too much the same

  1. She(3) ‘They’

    03/05/2024

    She(3) ‘They’

    They He pulled. Felt her hand in his. Remembering her taste. Her smell. The way her body cleaved into his. His into hers. Mustiness.  Earth.  Wonder.  Urgency. The earth crumbled around him. It matted his arms, legs and lower back.  His hair.  His beard.  He sat up. Felt the dull ache, the throb of life to be given fill his awakening being with her.  To her. She could see him now. Lifting himself out of sleep. His own dream wrapped around him. She released his hand, reached over and kneeled beside him. She cleared the soil, earth, pebbles and stones from his  feet, his legs. Saw his rising. Spread her warming hands and cleared away the earth and winter from his torso, his arms.  His eyes were still closed. She caressed his face. His beard. And combed his hair with her fingertips. His breathing, before, once shallow in intervals of time, slow and season, deepened as he trembled with the beginnings of power that infused him. His eyes filled her soul with his form. Half known. Half remembered. A sense of knowing and possession filled her heart and senses. They joined as the sky lifted.He the earth. She its Spring.They pushed and pulled and bound and knotted the spaces born in life and time between them.  A circle of birds arose.  Like leaves re born from yesteryear. They too combined in runes and patterns remembered long and hard, instinctively opening, outside, inside, and up and to the light above them. And in memories, coupling and murmurations, she and he, the two,  entwined again and again, the great pulse of life,  Again and again, they lifted seas and sons; the cycles born of time and place between them. It began to rain. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! p1964km@googlemail.com

    3 min
  2. She (2)

    02/05/2024

    She (2)

    S(he) He was awakening. The stiffness of sleep held him tight within its arms. The winter stars were wrapped in sheathes of time about his legs and lower body. From somewhere outside of himself he could feel a growing sense of urgency. A warmth. A remembering. He needed to remember. Wanted to remember. But a great fog of darkness still held him. Whispered to him. Wanted him to remain within it. Somewhere. Somewhere. ‘Here.Here.’ He could sense his own voice outside of himself. A movement beyond his own vision. A feeling. No more.  Shapes formed around him. He felt a tightening within him. A gnarled, knotted network of strength that rooted him down began to pull up from deep beneath him. Answering a deeper call from the pressing darkness around him. There it was again. And again. A pulse. A throb. A release of heat into what he could feel awakening above him. ‘I must move,’ the thought, if that was what it was, an impulse, a command, came into his consciousness. He felt the pull upwards. Strong. Ancient. Remembering.  He knew he lay between roots, trunk, branch, leaves to be and the great emptiness of sky. Something was tracing upon his still bound hands. Patterns. Repeated. And again. ‘Runes,’ the shapes, became sounds. The sounds, familiar, became repeated, and grew into words. The darkness around him began to thin. Began to dissipate. Light, for that was what he remembered, slipped between the stars and spread in warmth around him. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! p1964km@googlemail.com

    2 min
  3. She (1)

    01/26/2024

    She (1)

    She (1) She was not sure when it started. A cold day perhaps. Long shadows. Early evening. She could feel in her memories the wind blow cool from the mountains around the valley. A shiver of possibilities across the lengthening dusk. Maybe it was then. When the first stars blinked across the skies, the first street lights flickered and then failed. ‘Yes. Perhaps it was then,’ she thought to herself. She closed her eyes. Lay still and quiet. Felt once again, the first time it touched her. Fingertips across her face. A breath through her untangled, uncombed hair. Two hands like ripples along each side of her spine. She felt naked. Known. Not wanted.  Needed.  Essential to something outside of herself. It was not a violation. More a justification of her being there at that moment and now. A now that seemed to stretch from then until the now. The here where she lay under the freshly mown grass,the open blue sky and the rim of trees that nodded and whispered in the late spring breeze. ‘Yes,’ she admitted quietly to herself once again, ‘this, what is now was born from then.’ She reached out with her hand and blindly sought his own. She felt through each new blade of grass, felt the soil crumble, warm and fecund through her fingers, smelled him close to her, his breathing, his mustiness and then found his. She caressed the palm of his hand. Followed the lines and marks, the calloused knots and branches of experiences that were written in his outstretched fingers. Feel free to contact me. Be nice to know who my audience is and perhaps you can suggest some further topics or themes for my writing! And do give me feedback! p1964km@googlemail.com

    2 min

About

A selection of stories and tales, mainly about the natural world, our place in it, as well as stories about everyday people who change their lives and others by being different or perhaps by being too much the same