Josh’s Choice

The wind blew spatters of rain into his curls, lashing them in dribbles across his glasses. Muddy hands slipped to grope wet leaves as he tripped. A large rough surface scratched his face, smashing his glasses off.

His knees landed on dry pine needles. He blinked blindly — and saw a glow of light beneath the thick branches that blocked the night’s storm.

He pulled the back of his hand across his eyes and the cold lump of wet nose between them. Surely he was only imagining the sharp details of a wavering girl, white sleeveless gown streaming behind her. Her long face grave, eyes dancing, she asked, “Well, what do you want?”

He licked his lips, tongue catching on the ragged squares of dry skin. Him? Want? “To know?” came from his tortured brain.

She laughed merrily, tossing a glowing hand behind her. “And what exactly would you know? The future, the past? The present? It’s all a dance.”

He stuttered, hands scrabbling purposelessly in the dirt.

“Is the future more important than the past? The past than the present?” Her words were singsong, and she cocked her head inquisitively.

The past, or future, to know any of them, did he really want that?

“No,” he said unhappily. How to choose, to bend reality from its state?

“I suppose … I don’t want anything.”

He blinked, finding himself standing in sunlight, at the edge of the forest. He glanced in surprise at his clean clothes and hands — hands that grasped a pair of broken glasses. He could see? Without his glasses?

A sense of loss pricked his entire being, covering him. The loss of her. He turned to the depths of the universe and shouted, “Wait!”

Time whispered sadly,

“Never …”

again

— and sprang on.