Underground

He had promised her a river. Not exactly, but when she had looked it up on the map and found that there was a river and she had told him that she had looked it up he didn’t say anything. So she came to her conclusion. When she told her best friend, it didn’t feel as much an illusion any longer. Now that someone knew, she had put it in words at least once. For those without, it would be a secret, in limbo, unsaid, demarcated by an invisible line.

When they arrived, it was dark, too dark to see the water, but she could hear it, the currents and whirls, chortles, pieces of debris, leftovers gone astray, pushed and pulled by the stream. She remembered what she had seen. She loved to watch. Water from bridges. Forests from hills. Sky in her dreams. They were always endless. Something beyond. Flowing with the stream.

“The sea gives and takes but it never gives in”, she thought and started looking for the charger. It had to be somewhere in the bag that she had thrown into the trunk just before leaving. She found it in the potatoes. “Could we charge mobiles with starch?”, she thought and then “Blessed are those who surrender to truth and not to illusion giving in. And cursed at the same time. Those who can taste colours, music and dreams. Artists and poets, ah! Shoot all of them!” She listened for the stream. The river had gone quiet, underground. Was it only a promise? Was it more than a dream?