Holly's Aunt's House in Scotland

Scotland is just above England and it’s a lot colder. Rural land makes up for all the missing shopping centres where I go. I sit there for hours on end just watching, every year, just watching in the chair. It now seems to be my second skeleton, like my second body. Its lime green silk skin which covers its wooden skeleton caresses my body and cradles me like a new born baby. It sits in the warmth of the inside of the house. Where the fire splinters and the wood burns and the smoke swirls and spirals up the chimney towards the Scottish sky.

The wind wails screeching along the frozen horizon its great bellowing body flinging carelessly the dainty ballerina’s that pirouette through the fuming wind. Snowflakes spill from the sky as if someone had dropped a crystal glitter pot from the heavens. Great blinding piles of whiteness pile on top of each other like a white tiger sleeping in hibernation.

 The icicles dangling like a hanging man suspended above the window as they glisten and crack owning the air for a couple of seconds before they shatter and become nothingness. The forest homes in on you; the blackness swallows you up with one gulp. Its throat is a winding black hole that never seems to end. On the other side of the frosty land there is a thin line of murky greyness that seeps its way across the stretching sky.

A lone red blur trots across the thick slippery ice. Its beady eyes scan across the land. A long sleek fiery tail shadows the fox. Its fur ruffling in the shattering, howling, screeching wind. It stops stands stock still. Its eyes pin point a rabbit, a hare, a duck something it’d like to feast on. The fox creeps forward his body getting low, his stomach barely touching the frosted lake. It creeps a little forward one delicate foot after the next. Then……. he's gone. Flying, skidding down the icy ground after his prey. Then within seconds he's gone off behind a hill slipping and sliding but still speeding. His prey would have no chance until the sight of sleek white beating wings batter the air and his prey flutters into the sky. Its great orange beak looking down at the empty mouthed fox then the wings take hold and it thumps at the angry wind. It’s not nuch later before a white dot disappears into the blue starching sky.

 Little white dots scatter the sheeted white ground. A small groaning ‘baa’ echoes in the distance. 

Away from the shivers and prey of the outside, the comforting crackle of the fire sends warm goose bumps up your arms. The wood splinters as the fire prances over it, twirling and jumping going over and over their dance rehearsals. The smoke crawls and creeps its way up the red brick chimney murmuring and whispering words until it reaches the sky and pours out over the lonely Scottish land.

A call of my names winds its way through the endless rooms and empty corridors until it reaches me telling me to leave, that its time to take the train back to London. I leave the life outside to get on with what it wants without being watched by a small girl. As I step away from the scenic view the wooden floorboards groan at my weight. Seconds later the room is empty: the scene alone in its own peace. The chair now empty, waiting, just waiting till next year.