Palm of the Hand

We waited month after month. We watched the road. Nothing. It was silent. We were forgotten. There was no sign of anything that could even offer a glimmer of hope. Time was frozen here. Everyone here could somehow feel that. Yet, the seasons continued to change. Perhaps no one told nature that time had stopped. The leaves began to lose their green and they soon drifted from the branches to the ground. The sun went down earlier every day, dragging the night on for hours and hours. The squirrels stopped frolicking and only stayed in the trees with their hoard of nuts to last all winter. What was to happen to us? We had already been here for months. Was there any possibility of going back "home"?

There was a field of purple flowers that grew nearby. Despite the cold, the flowers weren't dead. They smelled strange. A little bitter. But they were pretty. It was like a scene from a fairytale. We would just lie down in the middle of the flowers. We felt numb. And slowly, we drifted off to sleep.