The Colours of the Rock

At midday the sun finally found its way down into the canyon, and the walls caught fire in the gentlest possible way. Red, rose, orange and honey rolled through the stone in waves, as if someone had stirred four kinds of light into the rock and let them settle.

Set into the walls she found small carved doorways, none deeper than a nest, and within each one a plain square stone. Here, in another age, travellers paused to pray for a safe road before walking on.

As she studied them, a small pink bird alighted beside her: a rosefinch, its feathers matched so perfectly to the sandstone that it might have been chipped from the wall itself. The two birds regarded each other in companionable silence and left it at that.

By evening the colours had ripened into something deep and warm. Polly pressed a wing flat against the wall and felt the whole day's heat still stored inside the stone, like a memory the rock refused to give up.