They sat there by the fire throughout the evening and well
into the night, feeding the flames whenever they had to or
whenever they felt like it, making the fire ebb and flow
against the advancing night as their shadows were cast
upon the boathouses and the trees, growing and diminishing
with the light that surrounded them both in its abscense and
in its presence.
As they became familiar they shared their most secret
thoughts and ideas, agreeing upon the truth and the
answers and then lying some more and arguing over who
were the meekest and most ascetic amongst them. Of how
little they needed to be content with their lot, feeding the fire
a little while longer before the arguments died out together
with the flames so that they could finally retreat, each to
their own, where they would hide behind locked doors and
fall soundly asleep and stay that way well into the next day
while they packed up and left, going back to their lives in a
dreamless slumber, back to their captive existence.
To the very lives from which they claimed to escape.
When they left I left as well. Uprooted by the wind like a
docile vortex, an effervescent mind that kept going around it
self in ever smaller circles as I retreated back into the
mountains where I started drifting around again, reluctantly
going from one location to the next without engaging in any
of the work I was supposed to be doing, spending my days
sitting on top of my truck instead, on the roof of that little
white unit who had brought me here, mindlessly staring out
into the world, ignoring time as it passed by, noticing only
how the shadows grew longer until they merged with the
gloom of the evening, reminding me in the process that I too were false and shallow, that I was nowhere near finding
what I was looking for.