Pale Wine at Sunset
Life is what occurs between the consecutive episodes of our well-planned tasks
She had told both of them they should keep moving, but the two fools were dilly-dallying again, rummaging in the cellars; Gaarnaq for infofiches, Sorkaii for wine.
So she sat straight-backed on the very edge of a torn, bone-coloured sofa that must have been a favourite of the fallen Tsaritsa, suppressing her adrenal-gland output and planning their next moves.
Through the breach in the palace wall, she watched a flock of small charcoal-and-amber birds of stripe, their silken tails twitching, cartwheeling and warbling in intricate play.
The sun was sinking towards a jagged line of distant mountains, resting on a bed of green, interspaced with rising grey tendrils of forest fires. The globe shed its blinding gold for mellower saffron, casting ever longer shadows into the ravaged royal chamber, accenting the shadow patterns of the splintered book cabinets.
So passes the might of words and toil of scribes, she reflected distractedly, leaning back in the peach illumination.
Gaarnaq glided in, accompanied by a grinning Sorkaii with a dusty bottle and two crystal cups held between the fingers of his other hand. He sat the booty down on a scratched coffee table the drone had tractored in, a silhouette in the rays of persimmon.
Later, an enemy fighter drone broke the sound barrier up there, in the whisps of the umbra.
They told her they should move on now, but Iaanda insisted on finishing another glass of the pale wine, reclining against the shadow of bone and staring at the remnants of the disc’s blood-red crown.
The above texts were first published on Twitter and are © 2023 by David Pahor.
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