Over the Hills of Fal Amur

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The pharmacist stared through the window of the front door. At the sides of her phramacy there stood two people. One, an elderly woman looking through the plastic bottles on one of the shelves, and another, a man just a few years over middle age, on a chair close to the entrance, blurring the line between asleep and awake. Night was breaking over the little she saw of the town's street when the bell above the door rang letting an old man inside. No one but her and the flickering white tubelamps seemed to have noticed his arrival.

Looking not one day above a houndred, the old man made his way towards the counter. From his coat he pulled a piece of paper and placed it on the counter for the pharmacist to read. His gaze raised, and their eyes met. She smiled, and told him something he did not hear, then she left through the door behind her to look for the old man's prescription.

When the pharmacist returned, she faced a brightly lit field, one like she's never seen before. Her eyes had no issue adjusting in the unnatural light of the sky and its bright blue color, yet the purity of the fields was new, and strange to her. Over the counter, tall grass was rustled by soft winds. The usual cold she felt in Aldere was foreign to the chilling breeze blowing on her arms and neck.

She took two steps forward, stepping off the granite flooring and onto the grassy soil. Her local park felt coarse and tired, she thought, taking another step towards one of the aisle of her pharmacy.

The boxes and bottles of various medicine and nutrients she was selling was all there, left alone on their spot on the shelves. In fact, all of the short aisles of shelves of her pharmacy were there on the hill with her, placed directly on the grass. Just the aisles, the counter and the wall behind it, the stock on the shelves, and in the distance, sitting on a stone a few yards away, the old man.

May have been her face, or her voice that called upon a memory of the old man. A past emotion reaching deep down the chambers of his heart, her expression, and her look. An unwed love, or a daughter raised and lost, by pure instinct or by choice the world around the old man unweaved itself and brought back home, the open skies of Fal Amur.

She walked towards the old man. Seeming lost in thought, he gazed in the distance where nothing but more hills laid, sometimes breaking blades of grass and playing with them in his hand. The pharmacist said nothing, and instead left the wind blow by her and the light of the sky rest on her face. Still holding the paper bag with the old man's prescription tightly in her hands as if needing it to harness herself in reality, she sat on the stone next to him and together they watched over the hills.

Never were skies so bright and clear.

And rarely were winds so crisp and alluring.

But often was the world so quiet and forlorn.

The old man reached and grabbed the paper bag from her hand. From behind the counter, he smiled, and she stared him in the eyes for a moment before she let go. Behind him everything was still, the same, and yet the pharmacist could still feel the smell of the field lingering around her. He smiled in thanks and turned to leave, passing by the still undecided woman and the snoozing guard at the door. She took a glance at her watch and, under the lights of the tubelamps, she went back to her day, sometimes playing with the blades of grass in the pockets of her coat. The bell rang letting the old man out, and through the window of the front door night slept uninterrupted as it always does.

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