The mist rose from the Mardi River the way breath curls in the chill of dawn. The river gave a long exhale summoned by sunbeams, its breath ethereal and sinuous. And for a moment it seemed that all things were caught on the rising vapour, all of it, drawn into the immensity, then vanishing into the blue vault.
The river gives it up slowly, a thin gray vapour unfurling from its surface in tender strands. It isn’t hurried and has a time of its own. The world at this hour is made of patience – the kind that comes from knowing that all things rise and all things fall. The mist rises when the sun tells it to, and the river lets it go because rivers have always known how to release what they hold.
A pale sunbeam creeps in quietly. It slices through the mist catching the rising droplets and turning them into something half water half gas. In that moment, the eye catches everything – every twist, every coil, every shiver – trying to decide if it belongs to the sky or the river. It is a brief tango, an indecisive dance, but the sky always wins. The mist stretches thinner and thinner until it is little more than a soft blur at the edge of things, a memory fading even as it is being made.
The in-between is the delicate moment when both exist at once. For just a breath, the world is neither here nor there. Everything is suspended. The trees on the bank are smudges of green and brown, half swallowed by the in-between. The stones shine with dew. The river is quieter than usual. It is in transition, in conversation with the sky, the moment before something becomes something else. It never lasts long but it’s always enough. Long enough to know that something beautiful has been here. Long enough to know that it is time to leave.
By the time the sun reaches its zenith, the mist is gone. No ceremonies, no goodbyes. Just an absence when something used to be. But the river minds not. It has seen it before. It will see it again. It never holds on too tightly.
