Brookside Dusk

By Akhel M.S

After spending the whole rejoicing in the limpid waters of the river, my body felt low while my thoughts soared high, commanding me to lay idle on the fertile banks to relieve the reins on my conscience to wander. Like so I did, subsequent to which what my eyes grasped was something called surreal.

The eastern skies were drained of their cerulean hue and were filled with soberest purple with stars usurping their dominance over the welkin by gradually reclaiming their effulgence.

The firmament lay upon me was poured with fleecy clouds with their borders of ivory hue. Their laminae were scintillating with a rose gold hue, delivered from the fiery orb. The welkin beyond them were rendered with infused shades of pink and crimson tinges like a water fresco towering upon me.

As my neck fell straight and head spearing towards the western horizon, the evening sun was hurling toward the jagged hilly figures bordering the surface of the flowing river and the coruscating yellow sky. Yes, the river was flowing west, meandering through the jungle wilderness, allowing its banks to be to bathed upon by the dusking sun.

As the drama unraveled across the firmament the river was simultaneously eager to replay it to the bankside onlookers, by reflecting the azurean phenomenon with its still yet slithering waters. It led to the waters of the river being exceptionally lustrous, and luminous enough to blind witnesses by reflecting sunlight.

Moreover, the river graceful enough to acknowledge the luster of the northern horizon across the river by its abyssal belts of mountains with jagged ridgelines standing upon as their snow-capped scarps were refulgent in rose gold hue, which grew more sombre as ridges passed, fading into the dark struck gorges.

The peaks were themselves adorned and encircled with billowy mists with a soft snowy hue. Gleaming past them were silver streaks of light, originating from waterfalls and brooks plummeting down the ashen hued crevices of the mountains. It was these water bodies which fed the river flowing beside me. The river in turn fed its banks by inundating it regularly, keeping the jungle sheathing it, hydrated and nourished.

The fertile sloping wet sands in the banks was the area in which I was resting, and is the only patch of land separating the jungle and the river.

The jungle saw the river breeze channeled through it by the towering royal deodars. The sunlight which slid through their canopy was slanting, like a grass caught in a gale, and struck the ground as individual spotlights. As the dusk propagated, the drone of the crickets intensified, while the salubrious swans sailing in the river sought to the banks, sensing the elongation of the shadows.

Darkness began to envelop the eastern vista as the sun buried itself away from view, leaving the pertinent hemisphere. Gales began to blow, blowing across the length of the river from the night sky to the east, following the sun.

Critters and birds of all sizes sauntered back to their respective abodes, leaving the river to flow in solace, under the low-lit crescent moon. It left the river waters oscillating in the breeze and was left to choose its own winding path out into the wide yonder.

By Akhel M.S