A moment sculpted for me.

I, more often than never, enjoy travelling, but the cold today, i have to admit, was a deterrent. It was the kind of cold that bites, a cold that threatens your wellbeing. The sort that you feel uncomfortable being outside with.
Mostly due to lack of sleep. It nips at you in such a vulnerable state, or so I find.
And so after a quick whiskey, I braved out into the bitter sunshine once more to stand at the coach stop, only to be informed quarter of an hour later that the bus was running half an hour late (My own mind assuming the bus did not feel comfortable in the current weathers presence either).
My eyes ached from the light, my knees and fingers slowly turning blue beneath material (not so much difference there then) and Columbo briskly walked past amongst other every day people, clutching a cigarette casually between two fingers, shoulders as high as ever, coat square as usual.
I became impatient. Very unlike myself.
And when said coach did arrive 40 mintues later, I was greeted by a filthy one. A coach that had been through a rough day already, and was certainly in no mood to haul my lounging, half frozen self to London. It was coated in what can only be described as muddy dust. From my view, I guessed you could barely see through the windows, so dirty was he.
Sure enough, as I boarded, the first seat I chose had chewing gum stuck to it, the second, the very seat itself had appeared to have made a jump for the next seat, not wanting that place even for itself.
Actually, I almost sat there, in fact I did for a moment, thinking it may deter any other passenger from wishing to sit beside me, thus making the journey more bareable. But more gum had me move once again.
Ah, my seat for the next two and a half hours, still quite disturbingly warm from the person who got an extra 40 minutes upon it, and perfectly covered in a veiled sunlight (that veil, of course, being 'muddy dust').

~


Leaving the city was a golden haze. My eyes adjusting to viewing the passing scenery through the thick coat of dirt combined with the harsh but fresh winter sunlight gave the impression of antique. I needn't have worn my sunglasses, the dirt was enough to shield my sensitive eyes, and I tried to scan people as we passed the bearpit, but the haze gave them all a blank, lifeless and featureless face each, as they moved around like large insects in strange directions.
That familiar warmth of three hours to look forward to on the coach slowly cooled, as the coach and it's bitter ways had gone about switching off the heaters. The cold sun fell through the dust and was sliding down sky, even he not wanting to be on this journey.

For a good half an hour I slipped in and out of a strange sleep, one that only lasted around a minute at a time, but my sleep being mine, I still recieved images and odd, misheard parts of broken sentences in my unconscious. When I came to properly, I read for a time, a shimmering gold silouette of a man correctly wearing his seatbelt lining my page from the window.
I must have been reading for a while, addicted though I am to a book I have read before, for when I looked up for a moments absent thought the tinge to my world was now purple. And the dust like glitter, the sky still light as the evening would allow, the air a falling white into blue. Hills we passed still had the hints of snow, some shadowed areas where the sun had failed to reach all day still white.
I read for a while longer, but the thoughts of previous days proved too much, and I simply felt I must indulge at such a good and quiet oppurtunity in pure and simple thought. The art of the mind and the images I have stored there.
Not a person was speaking on the bus, and the man across from me, so tidy and polite, moved around quite alot, but did not disturb me in the slightest with his perfect middle aged, salt and pepper hair and casually shaped eyebrows.

The book balanced in my hand, my coat draped upon me, i leant my head back and gazed at the grey clouds through the dust, dipped violently in pink and sinking into orange, the clumps looked wonderfully edible against the blue-fading-into-white sky. Oh I can't say I have ever seen the evening sky fade to white?
Streaks of the clouds thinned in places, and these were more purple than the pink, the sky darker the way we were headed, stretch marks to the premature night sky.
My mind fell into what it wished, and images suddenly flooded through my mind, a flash-show of the few previous days leading to my being on a coach to London. Voices audible, an image of myself engaged and wrapped in the memories I had just made. Eyes in the dark of a winter bedroom. I barely had time to survey my glittering view and finish my delicious thoughts when what may have been one of the most beautiful sights I shall see took place.
A flurry of swallows suddenly leapt at the window. I saw nothing of their approach, and made out no detail, each severly shaped swift of motion came out of no where, harshly silhouetted black to the pinks of the sky, such as the effect of a group of bats leaving a cave at twilight.
Myself a silhouette to another onlooker now, the coach must have lost all light as this small herd swept over the coach, the entire group (of what must of been around 40 birds) literally curved around the coach directly at my point of window.
Suddenly, as though the birds had thrown realisation, beauty delved into me. The refreshing and fading pink and purple of Twilight's sky returning to my eyes so suddenly I questioned the birds even existing in the fist place. And as though taunting me for it's obvious presence the entire time, a thin silver slit that was the moon sat amongst the stretch marks, clearly, like speech marks ending the perfect sentence.

I wondered if that moment alone was sculpted for me, the birds, the colour, the sky, the moon. Oh how I wanted to fall in love then and there.

After that the sky had darkened, as if in seconds. My eyes adjusting naturally, the moon slipping out of view as if just a brief reminder that night will indeed come, we entered London.

I don't believe I need to write any more, for the fire in the sky surrounded London once more, and I believe I fell in. Words will never have beauty upon the images staining my mind from today.
Suddenly the coach being late, each stop in the traffic, each time I fell asleep and each time I looked at to the window made sense. Because unlike any thing else today, my timing was made to be perfect.
A glance, a swoop, a dim and it was done.
So full my eyes felt, so bloated for what they had relished in this evening.

Luck, some times is allowed. And these strange little things only seem to happen when I am alone.