Patchwork Universe

Sorrel Sparrow · Average Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 28 Location: Hareton

"BRRRRRRRRRRIIING!"

Sorrel's alarm clock juddered into life, its old-fashioned dial showing seven o'clock. After a moment, a hand emerged from under the patchwork quilt, groping for the clock. It missed; groped again; found the clock; attempted to find the off-lever; and, instead, dropped the clock on the floor, still ringing. The lump in the bedclothes heaved itself upright, groaning, and proved to be a young woman, possibly twenty-five years of age, with a mop of tangled brown hair obscuring, for the moment, most of her features.

Sorrel leant out of bed and shut off the alarm clock. "Time to get up," she thought, "and get ready to open the shop." Slowly, she extricated herself from the covers and stepped down onto the rag rug by the bed. Picking up her dressing-gown from her chair, she began to pull it on, when a sudden realisation hit her like a thunderclap.

"I don't believe it!" she mumbled, throwing herself full-length on the bed. "It's SUNDAY!"

****

About an hour later, a small figure emerged from the front door of 'Whimsical Wardrobe', the costume shop on Bedford Street. Sorrel, having decided to make the best of a bad job, was taking a picnic up to Hareton Hill, the more northerly of the two hills which cradled the town between them. It wasn't a very high hill, but the landscape fell away from it all the same, and one could see for several miles. Sorrel liked to look to the east and pick out Berrinsford, where her family still lived.

Setting off across the still-slumbering town towards the hill, Sorrel hummed a happy tune. It was a gloriously sunny summer day, and she had packed a delicious picnic. She had plenty of lemonade, sandwiches, biscuits, nuts to throw for the squirrels, and a good book. As usual, she carried her sewing-box slung over one shoulder on its strap; she could always get on with a little embroidery if she got bored.

****

Sorrel trotted up the hill, panting slightly with the effort of carrying her weighty picnic. Finally she reached the best viewpoint and spread out her picnic rug. Settling down, facing east towards the sun, with her back to a tree, she busied herself pouring out lemonade and extracting a ham sandwich from its wrapping of greaseproof paper. She sighed happily and leant back to gaze across the countryside. The sandwich froze, half-way to her mouth.

There was some kind of mist, a whole wall of mist, hanging in the air! She could see Berrinsford, and the Banbridge road east out of Hareton, but past that, the hills towards Banbridge, she couldn't see at all. She put down the sandwich carefully, and turned. It was the same to the north. And the south. She hurried through the trees to look to the west. The same again. The mist shone in the morning light, but showed no signs of dispersing. But across the patchwork of fields she could see, there wasn't a trace of mist anywhere.

Sorrel sat down again with her picnic, and fortified herself with a sandwich and a chocolate biscuit before trying to think about the issue. "Freak weather conditions," she muttered. "Unexplained meteorological occurrences." She munched another biscuit, and peered out again at the mist. To the north, where there should be only fields, she thought she saw something shimmer...