Morning Ride

I have just found this very short story in an abandoned corner of my computer which I had not looked at for five years. I wrote it during the first lockdown of 2020, when that weirdly warm spring held us in its spell. I can’t remember writing it. But something about the longing it expresses has stayed with me after all these years.

She turned the old brass handle. It was worn and slightly loose.

And stepped out of the back door, brushing against its flaking green paint, to feel the morning air against her face. She let her eyes close against the light, all that distant solar heat. It held her.

A shrilling chorus had already alerted her to the day’s bright potential; just garden birds, isolated in their leafy outposts, sprinkling the summer air with thoughtless delight. And all that noise even before a milky sun had risen, mild against the misty line of distant hills above the city.

This morning was perfect, and so she would ride. Leaning her bike against the old fence in the back yard, she carefully taped to her crossbar the handwritten list of directions she’d extracted from a close reading of the map the night before; a custom-made hieroglyphic of crossroads, junctions, churchyards and isolated villages where dogs lay dozing on warm farm tracks, waiting for her passage.