Flash Fiction: A Barren State

North Uist. 2018 © Caleb Stein

By Olivia Rogo

The night carried a coldness haunted by the souls of the fallen men and animals, those sourced from evil or from a lesser evil, who trekked this terrain but failed by the hand of nature and man alike. The sky flecked with celestial beings hung low in the abyss of space beyond, and under the gibbous moon the cool breaths of air lay comfortable on the skin. The blueness and the blackness danced around the empty sand where they slept swirling towards the mountains with the dust and bending under the weight of their resting bodies. As the crickets chirped the depth of the landscape was substantiated while their echoes weaved in and out of the rocky peaks of the highlands and further on into the night.

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