First drafts really ARE garbage!

I am not sure that I would even call what follows a first draft. I had a few minutes to write and so I did. I wanted to write something different from the kind of thing I normally work on. I don't think I really succeeded, but I did rather let myself go in the purple prose department, which is vanishingly unusual. Before I talk myself out of posting such a silly bit of fluff, I'd better just do it and go to bed.
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Shall I tell you what I saw when I looked between the trees? Or should I keep it a secret, knowing that you will only laugh, and then get that worried look that I know so well.

Still, it bears telling, if only to allow me a chance to relive the moment.

I was in the dark beneath the trees which stood like the copper columns of an ancient cathedral. Not so far away, perhaps fifty steps, through an arch of boughs came a glow of river-tinted sunlight , nearly blinding to me in the shadows. But it was more than the glint of water. It was the glint off white sails.

Sails, I thought, on this tiny windy river, whose course takes it with and against the wind with every twist of the canyon? Moving downstream there might be the chance to take advantage of the current, making the sails irrelevant. But these sails moved upstream.

In only a moment, the gleam had passed across the window in the wood. Released as if from a spell, I dashed down to the bank, expecting to see an egret, or even nothing at all, just a trick of the light. Upstream, though, there sailed a boat.

A boat out of story, that was certain, for no such boat ever sailed the waters of this land. Silver-grey gunwales. Two white masts and silver yards. The hull was surely deeper than the river. And those sails—they took in the sunlight and reflected it twofold.

This could be no real ship.

And yet, in the stern there stood two men, or two man-like creatures. The same glow that shone from the sails shone from their faces. One looked ahead, his hand on a tiller. One looked behind, and he saw me.

He turned his face partly away and said a word to his companion, who then looked back and met my gaze.

Such eyes I have never met before. He was truly too far away for me to discern their color, nor to gather more than a blurry impression of his face, but his eyes are burned into my memory and they do not fade. All the colors of the sea at once, ever shifting, sunshine on the water after a storm. As one, they raised their hands to me in greeting, in parting, in acknowledgement.

The boat went around a bend in the river and they were gone. And just as the stern disappeared, I thought I heard the faint notes of a song as though in farewell. The sun seemed dim without them to shine upon.

I stood bereft upon the shore. I didn’t even think to run along the river trail and catch up with them. It would not have been…seemly. It would not make the boat more or less true if I rounded the bend and saw it or didn’t.

But the eyes stayed with me and have troubled my sleep now for two weeks.

In vain did I read newspapers and listen to the news. Not one report, not even a crackpot letter to the editor. And there are houses all along the banks and roads that pass over on bridges of stone and steel. If I am the only one who saw…

And yet, those sails burned themselves into my memory, and the eyes into my heart.

I know what you will say. I see the effort it will take you to keep from shaking your head. To keep you from looking down in your impatient, worried way.

I can assure you that I have not returned to the river. I want neither to look for some sign of passage, or confirm my doubt that a boat of that size, a small ship, really, could have passed up that shallow stream, under those bridges. I am afraid that my very craving to see it again would bring it into my vision, and then I would call myself mad and sully the memory. As long as I stay away, it will be real.

But what am I saying?

I once went to the river, a little farther upstream and as I sat enjoying the song of water running over rocks, there was another glint, followed by a squawk. On a weathered stump stranded on an eyot in the middle of the stream stood a large but stocky bird, green winged and rusty-necked, with yellow legs. It watched the water for a moment, then walked down the stump and into the water. A moment later, it darted its beak into the water and came up with a wriggling silver minnow. The bird leapt from the water and flew away, still pinching the fish in its beak.

I went back to the river every day for a week at about the same time and did not see it again. But I never questioned whether or not such birds actually existed, even though I’d never seen one before. Much later, I did actually find a picture of this strange bird—a green heron—in a bird book.

But in what book would I find a picture of the boat? Or of the mariners? I almost fear the answer.