Author: Amita Raj
Dressed in soft celestine blue, the full moon illuminated the sky amidst the final saffron-gold hues of the dusky evening. Grey seagulls, red- beaked parrots and jet black crows sang their bird songs.
Shaping colourful patterns on the horizon, they all flew up upwards. Joining the fluttering blue butterfly, I found myself flying high as well.
The breeze hummed with me as I wafted on it in my trip to that lantern of beauty. As I was rocked gently, I sang my ode to the moon. I soon found myself enveloped in an increasingly attractive scent. It was the fragrance of the approaching moon.
She was blooming like a many-petaled rose of dainty rainbow hues, inviting us all into her haven. Descending from the breeze, I landed on a rock. It shone in many shades of opal.
I ambled now through gardens where leaves from flowering trees glittered like green peridot, and garnets trickled over me like copper-red dew.
Continuing to sing with the birds, I gazed at the lake in middle. Fringed by reddest roses and wine-hued lavender, it shimmered like a molten mirror. I gazed at my reflection in this lake. Everything here looked a moving painting of life.
“Astronauts and satellities have landed on the moon, but never described such mysterious delights!” I sang out. “Wow, this trip is so much easier than I anything I’ve ever read about it.”
That crow waltzed crazily, cawing at me in response. I laughed softly with the breeze as the butterfly, parrot and gulls joined me in this feast of riches. “I’ll have a most strange surreal experience to share with my fellow humans once I get back to the earth,” I said.
Then came another rush of that silken moon scent. While still drinking in all this lunar loveliness, I felt a human hand tap my shoulder. That’s when I realised how wildly I’d been engrossed in this magical painting titled ‘Trip To The Moon’ It was hanging on the wall of the art museum where I’d been daydreaming all this while!
About the Author:
Amita Raj holds an M.A. in English. She’s always loved creating imaginatively rich stories through the melody and colours of language. Her writing talent was sparked off at age eight in a classroom assignment, where she wrote the autobiography of a pen. Since then, she’s been enchanted with writing, also reading and enjoying the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. She’s been a contributing writer to Deccan Herald, India Currents, Twist&Twain magazine, and of late regularly to Story Scrapers, ArtoonsInn Poetry Parlour and Beyond The Box. She looks forward to her ongoing lyrical journey, writing and sharing with the world many more of her short stories, poems and novellas.
