She stood perfectly still.

The gossamer thread barely inches from her pert nose shimmered and shivered despite her slow and shallow breathing, her long silky lashes lifting and lowering as she watched the struggle of nature. A many-legged creature picked itself across the expanse daintily, masking its excitement as it advanced on its hapless, struggling prey.

There was no need to hurry, after all. There was no escape.

The creature guided itself across its firm nest of silken steel strands, feeling for yet another movement in its fine web before it continued on toward its meal.

She hardly dared to breath as she bent even closer.

One thin, elegant leg lifted, tugging the snarled threads ever so delicately as its prey thrashed, desperate to escape, instinctively knowing its fate, yet not intelligent enough to find a way free.

She didn’t dare to blink, lest she miss a thing.

The desperate prey was dragged mercilessly across the almost-transparent silk threads. Its fate was sealed as the creatures jaws clamped down and all motion ceased.

Her lungs were bursting.

She twisted the threads gathered in her lap.

One after another.

One over the other like a quick dance of the hands that only she knew.

A picture was before her mind’s eye as the beads clacked away in her lap, her knowing hands from years of experience, from years of sitting on the same rocking chair, back and forth, doing the same endless dance everyday, never faltered even once as she stared out over the shining water, sparkling with stars as the sun dipped below the deep cerulean horizon. The water that never changed, even now.

That shimmered now, even as it did when she was four, sitting at her mother’s knee and hearing the same clacking beads and whirl of colour behind her as magic took place underneath her hands.

A gentle breeze blew across her face like a caress.

And suddenly, a thin ray of sunshine hit her face like a slap to her senses from the years that had passed, that had been lost like the youth that had drained away.

There was no magic anymore, she remembered, as she glanced down into her lap.

She saw the snarl of rough, badly spun threads and gaudy beads that lay over her work-worn apron between suntanned hands. Hands hard from years of farm work and yet wrinkled with age like so many pieces of old driftwood. There was no magic here.

There was just the endless threads of time ending, in this moment.

---

I remembered today, after checking my Livejournal, how in the past, I tried to write a little each day, no matter how short it was. It was a liberating experience – at times a chore – but all the same, allowed me to use my creativity.

I haven’t written anything creative in a long time and that muscle has been unused for a long time. My writings often carry a melancholy note, but I wanted to start getting into the habit of doing some writing again, therefore this is what I call the ‘New Post’ project. I’m original, I know. :)