The yard

The heaviest of the fog was burning off, as quickly as clouds in a time lapse.
The sun, westering towards zenith, cast a kaleidoscope of blinding beams on the silvered mirrors below.  I had no guide, no precedent, to tell me how to proceed.  Wary, at least, I must be.  In the glare, I could make out little, until presently a water-coloured cloudbank approached.

In the dun light, vision was sharpened, and the ships (for so I thought they were) took on a sepia tone and a strange air of unreality.  There were hundreds, in seeming shapes of domes and standing bullets.  All was still and silent, as the world here had been since yesterday.  The clearing in the valley was otherwise featureless, save for an oddly shaped structure which resembled a bisected mushroom head .

I was partly down the steep slope, keeping to the camouflage of brush, when I spied movement in the shade of the structure.  Figures.  People.  The first I had seen alive since my sojourn with little Miss.  Some were gathered in groups, talking, while others sat at a large round table.  I crept further downslope, and saw that they varied in description:  young and old, men and women, even small children.  The scene was peculiar in that they all kept to a semicircle of bare earth, about the size of a baseball infield, around which there was no visible fence or boundary.

I halted to consider what to do next, when my inhibitions were put to rest upon hearing some laughter from the group, and the sounds of happy children.

At this, I stepped out from the forest gloom, foolishly perhaps, and showed myself.

to be continued……….

….previous story is “Silver seeds”