The Storm

[This is an essay I wrote for an English task. It was well-liked :) and I would submit it for the Eisteddfod if they didn't change the rules about essay submissions.... dammit! The title I gave it always reminds me of the really really raunchy short story we studied in Canada...]

Thunder could be heard rumbling faintly in the distance; rain began to spit from the sky; the wind was beginning to rise. The last sliver of sunlight was inching behind the ominous, billowing swells of the sky. The trees dotting the hilltops swayed, branches flailing, the wind blindly conducting nature’s percussion. The sea of grass undulated in a rippling spectacle as darkness slowly fell, the tiresome day finally over. The tumult of the coming storm had not yet commenced, but was as certain as the rising of the next morning.

Along those hilltops, curving and snaking around the path of least resistance, lay a faded and hard road. A gritty dirt track, in fact, far too covered in inconvenient pebbles to be seen as well-used, was a more accurate description. Along this track lay a humble cottage, short and squat, built of large stones by ancestral hands. The small chimney poking through the thatching betrayed a hot fire inside as it belched smoke into the thin air. The shutters were closed, but a warm glow emanated from chinks in the wood.

The atmosphere inside the cottage was the antithesis of the exterior, as though it were a sheltered cove, safe from the giant swells outside. The only hint at the coming of the storm was the occasional clatter of a shutter; the thick walls and crackling of the fire blotted out all other sound.

The fluttering flames, though large, were the only source of illumination, casting their orange glow on a table with a solitary bench. On the wall, sometimes hidden in shadow, were hunter’s trophies: skins, heads of animals staring blankly, and the products of these, as jewelry or decorative items. A lone picture frame stood on the mantelpiece, a black-and-white moment of pride frozen in time. A door, shrouded in darkness, led off to an adjacent room.

A man was hunched over the table, well-built but aging, back slouching a little more than expected, hair-ends a little too faded, hands a little too shaky. Maybe one day he had been the epitome of physical prowess, but today he was past his prime. He had discarded a thick cloak in the heat of the interior, and was now clad in roughly-hewn hunter’s clothes. His beard, like his hair, was grizzled and a bit too ungainly, but he had tucked it into his shirt not to disturb the space in front of him.

In his aged hands he held playing cards, no doubt a result of a sojourn in the city. He would slowly twist the deck between his hands, turning it this way and that, and then would place cards on the table in the style of a Russian solitaire. Every card was pinched by the fingers, folded off the deck, and then, after some thought had been given, placed on the table with an audible click. When he had finished, whether in success or failure, he would gather them up and commence again, as the storm battered the little cottage.