The Sky Man
Something like a story
A thick moustache above protruding lips, round eyes covered by a thick cap of curly hair. He dissolves, then a lady’s profile with a lovely long nose, hair falling to the side. Then the man with a funny fur cap and a pipe at his mouth. Then another and another and another.
He could spend hours watching these people in the sky — their features so vivid, even if only in hues of white and blue, and sometimes grey.
He knew that others laughed, when he care-less crashed against the things of this hardened earth, while he walked on looking up, longing for the soft of his cloudy dreams. Neither their scorn nor the hurt of his falls deterred his eyes.
She fell in love with those sky-filled eyes. She listened rapt to the stories of the men, the scores of the skies. It did not matter that when she held him, his eyes were glued beyond her self, far into the blue.
But then the child came along. And she was left to toil with the slush of the earth in her hands, while the clouds above still remained all that he could care to grip.
Then, one day, he met a nomad pointing there — to a bright orange spot on the hills. The nomad said it was a magic flame that leapt up straight to the heavens, carrying any dream that was offered to it.
He did not go back home that day; just left for the hills and trekked for days in search of the flame.
She did not know whether to be glad or sad that he had left. It had been a week and things were easier, not having to see him gazing, inert and inept.
“He was not meant for this”, she knew. Just as this thought settled into her being, she heard the child: “it’s father; it’s father!”
She ran out with her heart in her hand, to see the child pointing to a passing cloud and saying, “it was him, ma; but he’s gone.”
She didn’t doubt it. As calm spread out within and without, she asked “was he happy, my child?”
The child thought for just a second and said “I don’t know.”
