Walking shadow

Moriah sat on a park bench, watching the park goers walk by throughout the day, and in particular watching their shadows as they moved about. Watching the way the shadows twisted and stretched in the sunlight, falling down like heavy sheets of rain, though she knew no one else could see the sheets of light like she could. The way they wrapped around people and fell past them, leaving behind empty spaces lacking light, and leaving shadows behind.

Those shadows showed things that people overlooked so frequently. She couldn't understand how they could be so blind to the things lying just under foot. Some people saw them on occasion, but they pointed to them as funny coincidences, jokes to be made rather than the truths of their lives set out before their very eyes.

She saw one man go by, and as he turned to grab something he had dropped, his jacket flipped over his head. His shadow looked like a woman flipping her hair as she moved to grab something of hers. Then the man stood up and brushed some of the hair out of face, despite the fact it had never been there in the first place, and went on about his way, hiding the femininity that he felt inside of him.

A couple walking their dog passed through the area, their conversation cut short when the dog began to bark violently in the direction of another man. They tried to shush him, telling him that the man was nothing that he had to be afraid of. But Moriah knew what the dog was seeing. It wasn't the man at all. His shadow, hunched and pulled into itself as it lurched along, like an ape running out to protect its family against a threat it perceived in the distance.

A biker rode by, leaned far over the handlebars as he tried to maintain a racing pace for a marathon approaching in the coming days. They were on the other side of the fence, and as their shadow passed between the stakes of it, a frame by frame animation passed by, looking like a swimmer gliding through the water with fast and powerful strokes.

Moriah stood up as the sun sank low, ready to head back home. Shadows stretched all around her, spread apart as the waves of light grew heavy and tired, holding tighter to the people and smothering themselves in the comfort of those who couldn't even see them. The evening air was thick and warm, and Moriah wrapped herself in it. She knew who she was. She didn't have to look back to see the massive figure coming out from inside her.

She was followed home by that shadow, that guardian that stood above her at all times. Her heart and soul given shape, standing as a giant, silently watching and protecting.