We rode the rickety bus together, side by side; eager for the journey ahead, all the while marvelling at the unseasonably warm weather, as sultry and humid as our fledgling love. My body conscious of the heat from your thigh pressed against mine, even through the flimsy fabric of my skirt, lighting a fire in me as if two sticks of timber had been rubbed together to coax a spark.

Dust particles bobbed and danced in the sunbeams glancing through the window as if putting on a show for our entertainment. The road beyond, cutting a ribbon through the swathes of purple heather carpeting the moor. So wrapped up in each other, we paid little attention to the other passengers aboard, only dimly aware of new people settling into their seats and others shuffling down the aisle to alight at various pauses along the way, the engine noisily idling as it trundled to a stop.

Occasionally, we’d encounter a pothole along the way, bouncing us almost out of our seats. Each time you’d wink as if to say, “ we made it!”, and our expedition would continue in companionable silence. Outside the torpidity in the air pressed down, unabated. Flying ants, wooed by the brewing tempest, crawled out of the dry earth and whirled by the window like black winged harbingers of doom. A pointillism painting against a soft mauve background. No kettle of boiling water here to douse them as my Mother was wont to do when they surged through the cracks in the garden path.

Soon the cerulean skies gave way to a menacing granite grey as the first plump raindrops slapped against the window, the change in temperature making the fine hairs on your forearms stand erect like iron filings seduced by a magnet. I shivered as a sense of foreboding overcame me as quickly as the opaque sea mist rolling over the moor like a rushing wave unfolding on the shore.

At that moment the bus juddered to a halt, the sound of the hissing brakes and spray from the puddles commingling like an almighty sigh. You touched my face and kissed my cheek as you whispered, “I have to go - this is my stop.”
“But it can’t be. We both bought the same ticket.” My shocked tone belying panic and fear as I clutched at your arm, willing you to stay.
“You don’t even have a coat.”
“ I’ll be ok. Be strong and I’ll see you later.”
Then as you walked towards the doors you turned and mouthed, “I love you.”, and were gone.

I ran to the back of the bus and knelt on the back seat watching as you disappeared from view. A grey shape, shrinking with the distance, blurred by the mist and the salty tears rolling down my face. I cried for what seemed like seconds, minutes, hours, until I gave in to fitful sleep. Waking only when the low evening sun touched my face. The calm after the storm - cool air brushing my tear-stained cheeks. Each mile taking me both further away from, and nearer to you.

My journey carried on alone. Many years later, when my hair was white and my face etched with the furrows of life, I rode that ramshackle bus over the moors again. The driver was the same, he seemed not to have aged in the intervening decades and was still wearing his uniform of white coat and stethoscope. We smiled knowingly in acknowledgement when he said, “Next stop is yours, Miss.” Then I heard the familiar hiss of the brakes as the doors opened and you were waiting for me.

• Hour of Writes: Finnbar - it was both! :) Nice to see you
• Finnbar: Really hoping that "testing the site" was a real prompt and not a developer note about launch-testing an update :)
• Tsukuyomi: What inspiration is there left to draw from a declining world? A world where we are disconnected from the forces which guide our own celestial motion, through the dance that is life. What horror frames our days? What beauty can be found within these four walls? Are we no more than stunted shades, purchancing goods in order to fuel the void growing within all of our hearts? We must connect with nature, for nature to exist at all.
• writerBFHEKQSXJJ: Delighted to have won the last contest but confused re.not receving any other entries to mark and whether there is a prize as I haven't been contacted by HOW staff at all. Anyone else enter and not receive marking/emails re.marking?
• swatie: -1/3- outside the window are days full of my mother my father’s gardens he calls prints of Punjab like the pages of a yellow book, my mother's nameless youth was caged between book ends— mother, father, daughter, mother her mother’s phulkari hand spun subterfuges to release, a family heirloom -2/3- like a painting to complete, it took many strokes to cover our days, a languorous summer, fall, winter, summer sometimes in between, like estranged cousins, impish winds would come to play a lover’s story sweet sweet warbles, singers made to order Pigeon fliers even in two tight plaits I felt free -3/3- a sickly gaze from the bedside sometimes upholds the promises of an opulent life up and down and between the shadows taming a temperate sun’s impish play what can a sickly gaze spare after all? irreverent skies, or cheap ticket stubs to window romances? —as if pastiches of romeos and juliets and romeos even with my romantic hair I am caged chipped pieces of bargain scattered all over the window sill.