Summer Dusk

By Fiona Jones

Summer dusk, and later than intended. I walk fast, pursuing the gentle endorphin thrill of physical exercise, enjoying the loneliness of late evening, hoping to attain my chosen distance before full darkness descends. 

Wild raspberries hang overripe in undergrowth beside my path, reds still visible, thin fruit-scent submerging in the pollens and leaf-tang of other species. Damp earth under trees, printed along my way with dog-paws, boots and bicycle-tyres, lies deserted now, solitary and deep in shadow. 

Movement, ahead, resembles a large rabbit but gambols like a deer: a hare, which could hide itself in tall grass and thick bushes but instead lopes easily ahead of me, pausing, joining two more of its kind and keeping to open path. Measuring my inferior speed, safe at the edge of my inferior senses, savouring, perhaps, the mild thrill of a pretend-chase that they cannot lose. Only when my path approaches the noisy A985 do the three hares abandon the open and disappear into mysteries of dark foliage and hidden ground. 

Between trees and the waning sky I glimpse bats in zigzagging flight, hunting the insects that rise on damp evening air. The bats can perceive my slow purblind presence, framed in their sonar; they hear my size and position from far beyond the range of my own hearing, outside the spectrum of my vision. I am a diurnal creature, and a slow-moving, vague-sensing one at that. 

I quicken my steps again towards the distant square-glowing windows of Crossford. A high-pitched cry startles me: a bird, but far too late for a day-flier. A white shape flaps ahead of me, watching the ground, ghostly silent on its wings but haunting-shrill of voice. An owl: large enough to take a bat, but no danger to the three hares; hunting field mice, probably, in the wheatfield adjoining my route. Small shufflings come and go beside me as I walk: hedgehogs, stoats, mice, maybe an invisible fox—all of them watching my blundersome progress, wishing me out of their way. 

I am gone. Back to my own square-lighted habitat, leaving the night to those who own it. 

Fiona M Jones writes short dark fiction, nature-themed CNF and sometimes poetry. Her work is published in literary magazines and anthologies everywhere except Antarctica. Fiona's website is https://fionamjones.wordpress.com/ and her opinion column is on https://www.vineleavespress.com/climbing-out-of-the-box.