Tidal Shift (fragment)

it's pronounced 'Pa-Le-Pa-Po'

The squat man smiled as he shook his head, and leaned slowly to his left for his stick.
The stick itself was a simple rod of bamboo, aged beyond guessing to a kind of deep yellow ivory, from it's use for training the students of the temple Nautili.
It was the stick Pale-Papo had used to swat his students, lovingly, for centuries.
"Master Pale-Papo, why do you need your stick? Do we go for a walk?"
The master hesitated, tipping his head slowly to the side, smiling a thin wise smile that might have been chiseled onto his face alongside any of the wrinkles that creased his skin.
He hesitated there, the moment drawing out,
"A lesson may yet be learned, yes... do you remember where it is you are?"
I looked around me, at the small cherry blossom garden that graced the upper ramparts of the temple. The jagged welded outline of the scraps of hull that made up the outer walls, cupping the dirt of the garden. The soft pink petals drifting amongst my master and I, he on his plain linen mat and zambuton, I on my blue and white set. Mine, the mark of the seventh year of progress, along the seas of cosmic tide.
"Yes, master. We are in the garden of the temple. We are meditating on the wake patterns of air cupping petals. We are allowing the tidal sound to harmonize. Is this not so?"
Pale-Papo nodded again, his arm still halfway to his stick. The steadiness of that arm, reminded me of the branches of the trees all around us. Pale-Papo always seemed, at times like this, that it was only out of respect that he did not reach out his arm this way for the remainder of the blossoming season.
"Yes, yes, it is so... is there no other detail that strikes you as worthy of notice?"
I blinked twice, and it was all the response Pale-Papo needed. What moments before had been a timeless, gentle gesture vanished, replaced with the sudden blurring "Thwack!" of Pale-Papo's stick atop my forehead.
My eyes were watering, but I could tell he was still smiling his ancient smile. It was in his voice, as it had always been.
"My student is very observant. Except he fails to remember that which matters most about his training."
Blinking to clear my eyes, my voice was watery and thick;
"...Master?"
"The end of it. You have allowed your fondness for these moments to cloud your memory. This place is gone, Yeisal. You were there to flee it's burning, yes? You saw me nailed to the very tree beneath which I now sit."
He was right, of course. Ever vigilant to the pleasant fictions of the mind, my master had been.
I had seen, for one moment, over my shoulder as I ran. He had been smiling, even as the flames consumed the garden.

Reviews

[SHEEMA HUQ]

A fragment indeed David, this interesting piece reads rather like a the start of something (much) longer, there is a sense directness to your observations, of the surroundings which I like, but it kind of works just as it is I think you need to put a 'for' just before, 'training the students'.