Vanessa ran up to the field with all her might and strength, heaving, coughing, pounding the muddy terrain with her thick black sandals, spreading a fog of mud and splinters of wood behind her, with the frock held up above, head leant forwards, she creased the tranquil fields with her passion of exotic grandeur. She reached the plateau above, paused for a while, stooping with her back bent to the ground, she panted, sweated, wetted her dress, she awaited the smite of exquisite beauty before her. Then, she stood upright, gaped at the lush green vegetation before her, spread her arms wide open, inhaled heavily, and kissed the air, air that flew over the gentle and sharp thorn-tipped wheat plants, air that smelled of the wet mud, which bosomed the greenery above. Sun settled himself in the field, he followed Vanessa as she moved sideways, she was playing against an irresistible urge and she relented, it was no use fighting her urges, she stepped into the field, mud drooped smoothly over her toes, water so pure, so cold, sun beat on her face above, water chilled her nerves from below, and the green stalks pushed themselves into her circle of attention. She listened, she attended to every shrub, grazed and caressed her naked palm over the tips, she found new energy, as if there was a hidden heap of exposed nerve fibers on her palm that never once in her life submitted to her senses, but now alive, transmitted with glory, as she made her tread forward, her nerves communicated, she felt naked and exposed, the thorny tips awoke her dead nerves and with the decades of death beneath them they acted vehemently, she collapsed under the weight of suffused liberty. She loosened her senses, and let them shoot through the insides of her flesh, she could tell it, the swords of delight were so sharp and fast that they pierced through her organs inside, hit the walls of her body, reflected and shot back, hither and thither until each of the swords ran out of their fuel of excitement.
Mounds of dark brown mud held the conical stalks in them, so tight that the wind only relished itself in brushing the exteriors, the tips, while the stalks stood upright in ascendancy. She stooped to get a closer look, life, she was smelling life that was not her's, air so thick and voluminous, sound so tranquil, only the breeze, not the whole, but the hint of breeze above affirmed the life below, for wind kissed the tips of life and carried it past the fields, past the plains, the mountains, oceans and settled on some higher plateau, where there was more life, higher life, which pulled all winds of life towards it. Vanessa remarked, ‘it was the ecstasy that she became a victim of’, so elegant and enormous that she could not stand up, she wished she could just sit there watching the pale brown roots hooking onto the ground so marvelously, with fistfuls of mud, they gripped on to the soil, for a moment she entertained the wild idea that perhaps all the wheat stalks were but hands of a giant monster, who gripped on to the ground with his multitudinous hands, perhaps he is endeavoring to pull the ground off its shelves, then she would be carried away along with the detached ground to the never-never land, to the plateaus of higher life, of thick and primeval greenery, so green that she would be blinded of the beauty.
From the corner of her eyes, she observed the sun closing in on her, she ran up to catch him, stamp on him with her muddy sandals, but the sun evaded, Vanessa followed, sun persisted, she sped up, he mocked, she paused vigilantly, he majestically, how he spread himself all over the life, how the sun beat on the tips, perspired her, enlivened the wheat crop, smitten her with an overwhelming heat, supplied the wheat crop with the succulence. 'madam', Vanessa looked in the direction of the voice, a man of an unhealthy gait, must be in his eighties, came limping towards her, she looked at him in horror, he was a dead man, he looked like a decayed trunk of a tree, his skin wrinkled, face so small that his countenance was indistinguishable with his wrinkle covered plastic bag sort of a face, his feet precariously uprooted from the ground, ran up to delicately balance his body, he was lean, appeared immensely famished, disoriented, his shirt drooped over his body like a cloth draped around a mannequin by a forgetful newcomer in the shop. The man spoke, or was it her dream, for he spoke so loosely that his lips hung on to their allocated places very precariously, he drooled like a pet dog when he spoke, paused for eons of time between his words, was he measuring her?, he had no company, he poured out before her, how he ploughed the field with his dead hands through out the rainy season, how he watched over his fields at night with just the moon visiting him punctually, how even the moon sometimes hid beneath the clouds of deadly biting cold winds as he slept there on the rocky terrain, waiting for the moon to resurface, he would then tell the moon that he withstood, where the moon failed, how he got enamored to the moon drowsing in his fields, bathing in his ponds of supplied water, the moon loved his fields, visited him every night, showered upon him, spread a swathe of frosty chilled air. Moon benumbed him, somewhere in the horizons, a fox made noise, somewhere in his vicinity, a crawler rattled past, over the dead leaves, but he persevered, he slept there on the same rocky terrain every day, but, there were days, when even the moon did not show up, once in a month, moon must have slept back in his home, but, he persevered, watched over his crops, for this was his home.
Vanessa listened painfully, all her jubilation slipped back into the ground under the weight of gravity, she walked forward with the air of ecstasy behind her, she shook the perspiring ecstasy off her body, and she walked into him, into his thoughts, this was not right, the contrasting feelings did not meet, they flew in parallel lines like the rail tracks, never meeting, only in the horizons did they meet, but one would always know, when one explored the horizons that the tracks never met. She deeply regretted her selfish demeanor, how overtly unconscious she was in her playful breathing of beauty, how nakedly selfish she was, she tried to cleanse him, his bruised body, lacerated and unselfish persona with her furtherance of ignoble tendencies. She prodded upon his maladroit conferral, concealed her surfaced propensities and heard, he opened up; she explored his thoughts, gulped in horrific memories, smoothed his lacerations, gently swished, blew into his bruises, assuaged him, smoothed him, patted him, and kissed him. Blood returned to fill his wrinkled face, lighted it, and his once painful wrinkles now glowed, his lips, once drooping at the corners, now stiffened, now spoke animatedly, now spoke words of humor, which once spelled out words of torture. He bid farewell to her, and she observed his gait, he walked with mincing steps playfully, merrily, when, once he walked about, lingering, heavy in pain, she swallowed his tortured persona, now he was twenty again, and she entertained the deepest of contemplations, only surfaced rather too quick to consummate in consent. She affirmed with equanimity, that the thread of her effervescent jubilation in the fields continued into the old man's thoughts, knitted the former with the latter so admiringly that she failed to notice any knot, it was as if, the thread was one, that she rejoiced in later, in acquitting the old man, just as much as she rejoiced in the former.
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