Glint – Part 1 – Piece 2

2.

Raising itself up it stepped slowly under the archway into the living room. All around the walls stylish brass lamps were fastened and unlit. Old portraits of landscapes and men on ancient machines hung on the dark brown wallpaper. Another shuffle turned the robot around to a luxurious cream couch positioned in the center of the room. Curled up behind it sat another small girl in a sky blue dress. For a moment the robot watched. The girl rubbed at her face and fidgeted her legs on the hardwood floor. Finely etched, almost human, arms reached out. The girl stopped and stared at the golden limbs moving towards her.

The robot’s movements cast no expression on the girl’s face. She looked past it into the hallway. A small leg stretched down the stairs was horribly visible. With no resistance, the robot lifted the girl and held her tight to its barreled chest. The girl didn’t resist, her arms flopped around its sculptured neck.

Standing up the robot walked back through the living room archway, but, suddenly, it stopped. The noise of a bell pealed in the distance. The moment of hesitation left the robot and it strode out of the room, girl held firmly in its arms. Moving quickly past the wooden stairs it headed down a hallway and into the kitchen. Securing the girl carefully in one arm, it grabbed a linen bag and threw in some cheese, bread, and oranges from the pantry. Slinging the bag onto its shoulder it threw open the back door and went onto the veranda.

The rear of the house was an expansive garden, at first a foray of elaborate flower arrangements and ponds which then led into herds of hedge-animals of every size and sort. The flower’s colours flowed from whites and yellows to dark reds and blues right up until the flower beds end. Behind the grazing, hedge-animals woods spread out tall and broad.

The sun was quickly vanishing behind the twisted oaks and willows of the wood the sun lingering fragile on the horizon. A pebbled path winded around the many flower beds, leading those who wandered its course by them all, through the animals and if one wished, into the woods beyond.