The Memory of Dawn

By D.J.Granger

The air was crisp and sweet with sea salt smells sprung from soaring waves which hit amongst rocks beyond a golden cliff that dropped down to the watery ground below. One hundred feet under a sky just as blue, the world was born anew, as Dawn cracked open one eye and out flooded an ethereal dye which cradled and comforted all theys, Is, and yous...

Dreams are infinite there, but there this is not, Paradise forgot...

She, Dawn Paradise, boarded up and locked, like a house ready to be torn down, bondaged and wearing a frown, said to a little man passing by, "Forgive me, then forget me, for I loved you not." The man, not even one-one hundredth her size glanced up the the sky which had no hue that day, "Did I hear a woman's voice, no a whisper so sweet it has slipped between my ears so softly that I was not meant to hear? A little man, who comes by the dozen times two or three, what goddess would impart a message from the heavens down unto me?" Then Dawn spoke to him again, "Forgive me, then forget me, for I love you not." This time he heard her even more near. "Love me not. Why? What have I forgot?" he mumbled some more until his words were unclear, garbled by a thunderous vibration which shook the atmosphere...

The last thing he remembered was that everything went black...

The first thing he saw were the prismatic colors that the sky continued to lack...

"It must be that time of year," he thought. Then he glanced to the left and swore a yellow fish flew by. "A fish fly? Surely not." He looked again and saw the same yellow fish pass. Then he gasped. And braced himself for quite a shock. Gills, yellow scales, and a slim fin to match. "What...why...why!?" The little man yelled up to the sky...or perhaps it should be said, former little man, because that now he was not. He cursed and cursed some more, but his vocal sentiments only amounted to plop, plop, plop. So he just stared in awe, because he realized the fish he just saw was none other than a reflection of him against a giant glass wall...

Love me not echoed in his little fish head. "That witch Dawn has cursed me... no, the entire lot," he thought, as more fish flew by, reflecting all the colors of Dawn's once brilliant ethereal dye. So he swam to the glass and squinted one fish eye, but could barely see past a slimy glare which shrouded the horizon in haze...

Then he thought, "Has it always been this way?" And the little fish who was formerly a little man continued to stare off into the horizon wondering how'd he spend the rest of his days...