Goldminer

Monday again and it's story time! Here's the fourth prompt from Hornsby Shire Libraries followed by my illustration in words.

Goldminer by J Anderson, 1861

Hera woke up, knuckling his groggy eyes and yawning at the break of first sunlight. His tent of canvas and wood wasn't much. After a munch on damper* and a sip of warm tea Hera padded down the muddy path that led him to his claim*. The sky was overcast, and so was his mood. The drudgery of panning* for gold had enervated him. 

Gold could be a treasured commodity but gold mining was treacherous - a different kettle of fish altogether - he reflected. Away from home and family, he was on the verge of abandoning this kettle. Who could sleep with dreams for gold when his eyes were aching with the ghost of Sienna's little hands from Nancy's cradle? It was smothering him - the lump of sorrow wasn't easy to gulp. 

Blackie was his only company in the desolate digging fields; he shared his mutton soup with him every evening. The kindness was returned with an affectionate bark,  a friendly wag of bushy tail, and a loyal company. 

As he started off for his claim, Blackie lolloped by his side, but that did little to cheer him up. Vision blurred with tears of solitude, desperation, and homesickness, he stumbled upon a gnarled root that jutted out on his way. Hera was knocked off his path.

'Blackie,' he yelled frantically, weak with febrile ailments, but nobody heard him.

'I must rush to my claim, I have to, otherwise it would be Nordik's,' he scrambled to his feet with the last ounce of his resilience.

'But it can't be!' He wheeled around and about.

'This is insane,' he bawled and it echoed back to him, ricocheting off the walls of endless tessellation of tesseracts. Gingerly he placed his left foot, trotting and toppling through the virtual wall - one opening to the other space. The floor beneath was woobly, precarious like a rope bridge over a turbulent river deep down a gorge.

Hera lifted himself up in the last desperate endeavour to escape the nightmarish maze. He sprinted, trudged, slumped, and yet didn't give up. Every enclosed space was exactly the same.

Why am I here? Am I dead? Is this my fever playing cruel japes on my mind?

'Sienna,' he managed to scream - a cry of despair and despondency, the veins around his neck standing proud of his skin.

The walls suddenly started wearing off, flying away like tiny little squares in murmuration, the floors vanished, the roofs melted and he plummeted, an iron ball or a feather in a room whose air had been sucked out. With a thud Hera landed on his bed, as though he just woke up from a bad dream.

Hera munched on a damper with a cup of tea, padded down the muddy path, stumbled on the root that jutted on his way, and...

A ceaseless loop in time - Sienna his only hope!

Dona, Sydney, Aug'21 

*

Damper: flour, salt, and water mixed together to make a sort of bread  - a staple food in gold digging sites during Gold Rush along with tea and mutton soup

Claim: a plot of land allocated to a person for mining gold; if unattended for a week, it was appropriated by somebody else

Panning: an old method of gold mining

Want more?

Read Shipwreck.