Tempus Fugit
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Katherine Wen, Grade 8
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Short Story
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2018
I once lived a quiet life by the nonchalant sea. The waves once curled at my toes and the sand once sparkled like thousands of glittering gemstones. The sky was once blue, the clouds flew like lost spirits and even the sun and moon smiled in their wake.
In the mornings I would do my chores; pruning hedges, fixing items and running errands. Where there was little time left, I spent it writing and reading in the perpetual library, and dreaming of faraway lands. During the midday, we would lick our ice-creams and dangle our legs in the salty water – no matter the weather. Then, we would venture around town and play to our hearts’ content. When the sun sank and the dusk arrived, I returned to my seaside cottage. My grandparents would cook dinner and hum songs from days long gone. I then sat on the veranda, gazing at the open sea until I fell into a placid oblivion.
But those days are over. They are gone, scattered like dust into the wind. Now, the dark sky forever looms above us. The road stretches in front, leading us into the great unknown.
There are no more sunny days. The sea is rough, the trees are stiff and stolid and the life we once knew is far away from us. Rubble and decay line the streets, and even the shops and houses turn the cold shoulder to us. Rain incessantly hammers down as people raise their umbrellas in submission. Time flies and we can never catch it. We can only hold onto our memories of the past.
We keep walking; we lost children, into the dying sunset. The fog whispers around us, shrouding all familiarity into alien silhouettes. The path is uncertain, the future is uncertain. Oh, how I wish those sunny days would linger. Why did they go away? Why did they snatch our blissful, seaside days away?
All good things must come to an end, and this is only the beginning to the dark days ahead. Perhaps this is the road to reality. Perhaps this is the path that everybody must one day take…
How true the old saying goes. Time flies – tempus fugit.