Puddle-River

It was mid-day. The heat was scorching. The moon was shimmering in the dark ripples of the lake. Mirages formed on the road to the lake. The heat waves blurred the road, as the winds rising from the frozen lake formed icicles on the nose. Sweat dribbled down the icicles, forming a puddle in the ground. The immense puddle of clear liquid, acquired a life of its own as it flowed into the lake. Mudskippers formed a colony on the dry sandy banks of the puddle-river. As the river flowed upstream, forests emerged from behind the clearing in the grass. The grass, thick, high and elephantine, grew on the tracks the elephants had formed. The mice moved among the grass, scampering and trampling. They flattened enormous patches of grass as they moved towards the bush in the forest, behind the clearing.

The clearing in itself was not very clear to the naked eye. It was very green, with numerous small trees jutting out of the bare ground covered in weeds. It was clear to the birds though (Their eyes, covered with a nictitating membrane, were not naked.).

The forest started where the weeds extended into the forest floor. The puddle-river meandered through the forests, depositing silt on the banks and creating high mountains. The mountains were a chain of fertile plains. Mountain goats prowled the plains, ever growling and hardly cussing. They cussed more and growled hardly, if the truth was to be told. Truth, although, did hardly ever heed anyone; he was not a person who like being told. So, the goats growled and cussed.

Three men had come down to fish in the river. It was a well-known fact where they had come down from, but sadly no one lived by the river to know the fact well.
Fishing in the puddle-river was not easy. The water was perspiratoryly saline. Most fishes did not care for such water. Those fishes that did, behaved like fish out of water, in the river.

When the puddle-river entered the lake, the view was orgasmic. Many a breath taken tourist had driven home asthmatic from the scene.

The meeting of the river and the lake, said an Old Timer, signified intense passion. Such passion can’t be described.
An old timer’s call should be respected.

THE END