Fiction Practice: Perspective

Once upon a time.

Perspective makes fools of us all, she thought, nudging Rupert with a foot.  That elusive, diminishing horizon point narrowing the grains of the planks, replacing the illusion of distance with the illusion of height.  

As a girl she'd thought she saw the world clearly with those shiny new eyes of hers. She'd trusted her sight with her heart and her soul. Now she sat, wisdom if not patience incarnate, contemplating trust and the melting of trust, the bitter lessons and the sweet.

Rupert's cold metabolism warmed audibly in the direct sunlight, the creaking and bubblings of a paused fermentation drowning the plash of waves under the dock. The organic sound bringing perspective back to her like a short echo: hunger now outstripping yesterday's meal.

Rupert would require a little something sooner rather than later.

For a moment she was lost in the little somethings available to them: a soupçon, a soup-spoon, a garçon, a –– Good lord, what a racket! ––  of what? Maybe cold green beans or a dab of gravy and a chicken leg.

​Well let's hope that'll hold him, she thought, big boy like Rupert had an appetite, no matter how you look at him.
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