Gayani Jayathilake

The sun shone bright over the high risen limestone this morn. The mountains leisurely disrobed foggy petticoats and frills of clouding to display brilliant hemlines of pine to a bypassing hiker. Storytellers and word mongers were already out and about to write nonsense about them. Some turned crude royal families in to stone and lodged them between other mountainous peaks.
Some wrote verses about the glaciers ahead with an awe about them while turning a blind eye to the melting sickness it had cloaked itself with as of late. Some rhymed words about the streams dribbling down from the snowy peaks, not knowing how thinner it got each year, month, day, second.

When some combed through the sheet of trees covering the mountains to write poetry, they got shot by hunting trap guns setup by their own sisters and brothers. When some camp on them for days to write reports about them they leave little gifts behind when they leave. The mountains still have not found any use for them. So far they remain in piles sometimes choking its other children, sometimes blocking its waterways. It is yet to find a use for it.

By noon when the sun reaches it’s highest pinnacle the white peaks glisten with a glare difficult for the naked eye to look upon. By then tourists have hiked over and reached ridges to click that ‘I was here’ photo.

By evening when the golden globe sets over the western skies humans scurry off to distant dwellings to write what they felt and paint what they saw. Remaining children point their hooves out and peek out of bushes and tree nooks when coast is clear to roam about at their own free will once again. Nestlings are sent out from nests to work on defying the odds to survive. A new set of beings come alive.

By dusk the familiar leave and arrive the unfammiliar. The earth slowly breathed out the warm air it had inhaled during the day. Sparing rays of light reflected a spray of hues over the moisture ridden clouds. Slowly as the day comes to an end, a blanket of white tucks in the mountains to end yet another day.