From “The Bell,” week beginning 6th March 2006:
On the Trail of Kelpie and Silkie
Rosalyn Pepper
The wood looked sombre in the rain. Beautiful, too, with the way the water dripped off the edges of the leaves, but sad. A smell of stone and wet earth. A dead mouse at the side of the path. The grey skies bearing down on us all afternoon.
My friend Judith said that days like this give her the idea that the world is fragile. “You can see mortality wherever you look. I think it’s because there’s so little daylight.”
We didn’t find any new Kelpie and Silkie messages today. We didn’t find anything as weird and mesmerising as the Chimps’ Tea Party, either. But just as we were about to leave, as we could see the streetlamps in the distance, yellow dots against the grey, I stopped to pick up a stone from the ground.
In pencil, I wrote, The rain will stop eventually- Kelpie and Silkie.
I’ve got to admit, it was cheating a bit. And I’m not even sure what I meant. But I do know that I couldn’t have ended today any other way.
camelwithout 