It's Still Life

Part 8: Brigid’s Diary, Night on the Rhône —

Half-Light and Wake

That night on the river I learned how sound can become a weight, the engine’s pulse settling into my bones until sleep itself felt mechanical.

The lanterns shook in their brasses, and the Rhône carried a smell of acrid silt and sulfur embers and old things turned over, so that even breathing felt like participation.

I stood at the rail long enough for my stomach to forgive me, and found my breath slowing to the Rhône’s steady shuffle, night teaching us patience. Felreil stayed beside me without speech, which was its own kindness, and the river took our quiet with permission.

Later, I understood that the modern world does not announce itself with ideas but with insistence, asking the body to agree before the mind is ready.

If progress can be learned this way, without choice, without rest, then the river has begun to teach us what it will cost to keep moving south.

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Previous Instalments – To access all of the instalments on one page, please use this link. For the Liturgy/mindmapping posts click the link.

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “shuffle”.  Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.