Kevan Smith - Absence

He sat, a stool staring out across the wide green valley.  Mountains each side creating a V of green amidst almost vertical slopes of rock.  Sheer faces standing over the valley succumbing its existence.  He wandered what had happened in the green Shangrila over its eons?  So many tragedies and glories had been fought for and die here, now part of the soil, enriching the green so bright in the sun it almost hurt his eyes.

He drifted back into memories of past.  The battles had been fought, fares he had attended, crowning of kings and queens on this very soil.  A soil that spoke to him of glory and pain and gain.  The soil of his ancestors who had once been.  Watching them grow and die and newborns grow and die.  People saw him, slept under him.  Shaded herds from the hot sun.  Kept snows from their backs.  He and his people were here at the beginnings through times gone and for times to come.

Birds and squirrels and elves and goblins used his branches to hide and fight and seek food.  Cast spells and told stories at his roots, children playing in his branches.  Goblins digging under his roots to hide themselves and victims and treasures.  Elves cutting small holes in his trunk and branches to make homes and joy and sanctuary.

Now it didn’t happen as it did so long ago.  It was far away in a more mystical, magical time.  

He saw the modern town and cars and pollution and damming of the lake down below the town.  Was once a stream, a raging river, a kind trickle fed by snows and summer rains.  Feeding the people of ancient times.  The moderns did not see him, did not hear him, did not know he was alive and watching them. There was now an absence of joy, it had left the valley. Only he was there, to be witness to the absence in time.