Drabble Wednesday: Dark Beauty

On today’s Drabble Wednesday we focus on beauty—dark, faded, and terrible…

The Orchard

The aroma of the blossoms saturated the orchard with a honeyed, almost cloying scent. They swaddled the trees in pastel pink and white; a perfect scene of the season. Life abounded in the blooms, with the promise of luscious, succulent fruit to come.

A cool spring breeze fluttered the petals, scattering a few to the dew-damped grass below. It swirled through branches, coiled around tree trunks, caressing the healed scars marring the bark. The cuts were deep, but they mended, new bark growing and reshaping the tree.

Still, they linger, those wounds. Like the bones buried beneath the tree roots.

  

The Window

A web of cracks spoils the flower patterns on the coloured glass, and the once vivid hues have faded from sunlight and layers of grime. The overgrown garden is only a blur of jumbled shades seen through the damaged, dirty window, but she sits in her tattered rocking chair and stares past the glass.

Perhaps she remembers far better days, her mind transported to happier times. Perhaps she ponders dormant secrets, or former, clandestine trysts among the roses. Perhaps memories of her wedding, or her children playing keep her gaze so rapt.

Or perhaps, alone, she simply waits to die.

The Cosmos Viewpoint

I beheld the universe.

In all its glory and wonder. In all its horror and despair. I went mad, surrounded by the force of creation. I experienced perfection, for an infinitesimal time and the briefest of moments. I was everywhere at once, and nowhere.

I beheld the universe.

Saw the divine infinite.

Saw the stygian void.

Now…

I cannot escape it. I shut my eyes and it is there. It whispers in my head. It blots out the sun and sky. It wraps around my soul and devours me.

I am caught, I am snared.

Help me.

Somebody help me.