Ophelia's sky

In the heat of the late afternoon I lay like the Ophelia of John Everett Millais amongst the beds of water crow-foot. The river was a cool velvet on my skin and when my ears were in the water the clean gravels murmured and gurgled as they turned over in the riffles.

I dried on the cropped turf of the bank above the low cliff with the sand marten holes, and lay there as the sun dropped behind a curtain of pearl and the western sky became gleaming silver. Trailing bands of dark cloud cut the brightness, masking the backlight. The cool and still of the evening soothed from the days heat and the last colour ebbed away from above me.