A Short Story?

Mist descends on the valley, and settles itself for the night. The valley takes on an inkish hue at twilight, the air of a day at its end - ploughs resting, machines silent, the cattle fed and watered. Her cottage submerges into the fog swirling around it. Silence. She sits on her cane rocking chair, rocking gently. She had dozed off in the afternoon, and had woken up to find the sunlight bleeding away from the folds of her clothes, journeying back across the veranda, receding into the yard, and then slowly fading away. She could now see the darkness before her lit by little pinpricks. Fireflies. She had always loved them.

She remembers other such evenings, when she was a little girl, back from school, sitting on this same veranda, reciting multiplication tables by rote, the chirping of crickets keeping beat with her recital. Her ear would be straining for the sound of her father bicycle coming down the lane, for the bell that he would ring, knowing she was waiting for it. She can still remember her mother, humming as she cooked in the kitchen. The sizzle of vegetables cooking, the sharp fragrance of spices enveloping her. If she peeks back, she might still see the sparkle of her mother's silver toe-rings, her sari swishing around her feet as she moves across the kitchen. Might hear the clinking of her bright green bangles.

The boatman sings a lonely song, his voice carried by the loving wind across the river to echo around in the valley.