Ouroboros

Eclipse over the South Pacific

He did not know where he was. Only that he was. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt that read WILL POWER over a portrait of Shakespeare, and his favorite pair of shoes. They were sneakers with a peacock print, the eyes of wisdom center front.

He was standing on the side of the road, he couldn’t remember how but his thumb was out. The moon was also out and full and he took comfort from it as it allowed him to see the length of the road. Not that there was much to see. It was a road. It stretched towards a point he thought of as ahead and reached back towards a distance he thought behind.

It occurred to him that there really wasn’t that much difference between the two. He thought that if he crossed the road (like the chicken…what does that mean?) he would just as likely go that direction. He did not like this idea. He did not want to cross the road. For any reason.

His thumb was out. This comforted him as well. It seemed to him that his thumb knew the way. He decided to trust it.

A little gust of wind tousled his hair and it carried with it a fragrance…. One he could almost identify. He breathed it in and it seemed to carry with it a name if he could just give it a moment.

That was when the moon went out.

It startled him. It was sudden. He looked up to see what could have possibly blocked all of the moonlight so quickly.

His first impulse, fleeting, gone so quickly it was almost lost, was amusement.

It was a dragon. A very large dragon.

His amusement swept away and vanished like whale shit through an ice floe.

He saw eyes. He saw teeth. He saw the mouth open.

And then he saw no more.