Ever the same

There was something vastly attractive about the old man's demeanor. It was a small porch, made of rotting pine and rusty nails. His rocking chair creaked loudly, the white wicker having lost its lustre and youth, along with the man upon it. Youth, perhaps, but not lustre.

His white and gray hair in two plaits fell along his shoulders and nearly down to his waist while a massive turquoise ring tapped against the armrest. The part in his hair revealed a wrinkled but firm forehead and strong eyebrows. His lips pursed together as if he was considering carefully his words before he spoke them. His ears, one pierced with a feathery dreamcatcher, clung to the sides of his head like weary travelers hanging on for dear life despite their fatigue.

His hands were leathery and worn, remnants of a lifetime of hard work and soft caresses, of harsh hammering and delicate beading. Needle pricks and tool callouses appeared side by side, co-witnesses of the life this man had endured.

But the eyes. Oh, those eyes! Blue as the sky on a sunny day, gray as the sea after a storm. They told stories, tales of days more simple, nostalgic yarns of peace and war were spun in those eyes. Hardened by battle, yet soothed by the touch of a woman. Cold as ice, yet warm as a summer afternoon. They were smooth and coarse, caring and painful, refreshing and stinging. The eyes are the window to the soul, and this soul had been wounded and healed many times. The song of the ancients danced in the lights of the eyes, giving life to a face that would have been otherwise quite dead.

The wind blew gently, disturbing the wisps of hair that had escaped careful braiding. Winds of change, he was thinking. The winds that came every year at this time, and would always come. That would never change.

The dry lips parted and began to sing a tribal tune.