There was a veneer of grass on the forest canvas, and it was ruffled now by the hot wind, as though tousled by a dragon’s breath.

The earth heaved as the sun drank from the lake, like a giant sucking honeydew off a dying man’s plate. A mirage had centre stage.

I sat watching the emissaries of the sky, and my restive thoughts drifted on their tireless wings to how waves rise and fall as one sometimes, only to be nowhere the next. How moments stroll on the sands of time leaving no trace of where they begin and when they end. Before friends turn to foes and colours to frescoes.

For they are beings of the present uncaught in the net of time, and to unfurl they wait for none, not even themselves.

They’re stripes in the water, verily there but gone before they’re even fully drawn, to the depths where only the lost are truly found.