Rye - Act 1

The creak of the rusted metal wheel was muted against the damp tarmac. The road wound through the dripping landscape and the old man creaked along with it. Late green of the summer leaves. A melancholic fuzz in the blueing of the light, fading with every passing moment. Dusk was settling on this small corner of the world. The creaking sped up as the old man reached a small stone cottage in the dint of a hollow. He liked that last bit of the journey, the earth pulled him home whether he wanted it or not. Gentle, yet firm. Bringing him to the small wooden gate, the periphery.  The slate tiles had begun to meld into the verdure of the hill behind and as his vision started to fail him, he relied on the warm glow of the small windows to shuffle down the path. Slipping into the light through the heavy door, he disappeared from view.

Bow sat on the grassy knoll under the oak tree as he always did, watching this scene unfold from above. His bare feet soaked in the freshness of the dewing grass and he felt his woollen trousers begin to sodden too. But he did not mind. It was almost time and he would dry off tonight anyway. Drawing on a simple wooden pipe, its glow betrayed a selfish smile creeping along his tanned boyish face as he looked out and over the rolling hills. Standing up slowly, Bow pocketed the pipe and stretched, grinning. Off in the distance he saw the last spark of the sun flash over a distant hill as it fell into the West. Bow turned to the old oak and placed his hand upon its crooked flesh. And then he turned, ran, and jumped. 

Eyes closed and hands out by his sides, he felt the rush of the air in his ears and the pleasing moisture wash his bare palms and feet. It was this feeling that he looked forward to the most. He was cheating the reasonable rules that the earth had set out for him. Opening his eyes, for a split second he was level with the warm glow of the cottage and looking directly at the Old man’s wife. She stared back, blinder than a bat and none the wiser to the nightly moment she shared with Bow. 

An instant later, just as the glistening road thought it was about to break him, he felt it. The gravity that was violently wrenching him onto the tarmac simply stopped. It was just no longer able to exert any force upon his body and instead, Bow leant back, launching himself into a soaring glide up over the cottage, back through the sweet layers of twilight and up into the

blue above. Beaming with euphoria he recalled that in fact, this was the moment he loved the most because if truth be told, he could never quite shake the fear that gravity would not release him from its burden, that the Earth would finally exact its payment from him. The image of his delicate cheeks being broken by the hard ground would race through his giddy head as he made the jump, but every defiant leap back up over the cottage and out of the hollow meant that he had gotten away with it again.

Floating over a rye field and the stout little farmer home, Bow relished in the feeling of his heavy clothes loosening and floating with him. He felt like a child, fresh and naked as it experienced the world for the first time. Dipping his head forward he slowly somersaulted above the mossy woods and flowering gardens of the other cottages dotting the land.