Contrails

         “I have grabbed the wisps of contrails and brought them to the ground. For you, I pull these remnants of time’s invulnerability to your feet.”
         His words floated around our heads, breathing our smell and permeating our pores. The trees and shrubs below my hands and feet, reclined on the slope, felt like matchsticks and popcorn.
         I rubbed the dust from my face with a clean motion and stretched my head back to the sky. “You told me that the marginal solitude of this life could be explained by the shapes I see above me.” The clouds danced through the sky, reflecting the sunlight in patches over the plains below. So close, I could touch them….so far, it seemed out of reach.
         He sighed. An enormous sigh that shatters the dawn and creates the day. “These things you have been told are a lie. A lie of myself and all that is around you, but most of all, a lie to that which is not true.”
         “I always suspected something…something not right about everything I’ve been shown and seen. Will you point the path to me?”
         He shook his shaggy head, the wands of curls danced over the breeze. “You must come to know that it is within yourself, never without, and always alone.”