Salamander

The air felt cold and smelled of rain, a slight breeze pushed against him. He wanted to laugh at himself, having come out here to think and possibly clear his head, yet the only thing on his mind was that he should have brought a jacket with him. His head fell down and he could feel his entire body pause for a moment when his gaze landed on what was in the stream in front of him. A small salamander -well he’s pretty sure that’s what it was- laid face down in the shallows, rocking slightly back and forth from the pull of the stream. So slight he wouldn’t really have noticed had he not been staring at it so intensely.

The reason his throat began getting tight he didn’t really know. Or, he did, he just didn’t want to think about it that clearly. So he let himself cry for the small dead creature, ignoring what it represented in the back of his mind. Let himself sit on the wet ground in a sloppy fashion, all the while continuously staring at it..

With shaking hands -when did he start shaking?- he picked up the salamander and set it next to him amongst the tall grass before shoveling into the dirt with his hands. The feeling of small rocks getting stuck under his nails grated against his nerves and sent chills down his back, but he still dug until the hole was deep enough.

“There you go, little guy,” he whispered putting the salamander inside. “Or girl, I really don’t know,” he half laughed. Covering the hole as best he could, he tried to pin down what he felt - sadness but a strange calm as well?

He sat there for a long moment, just staring, getting lost thinking about nothing in particular. The water was ice cold, as he knew it would be, but he washed the dirt off his hands the best he could before his fingers grew numb, cupped some water in his hands and let it slide down his face and onto his neck.

What felt like needles stabbed at his asleep from sitting too long foot as he stood up. His hands were cold, his face like ice as the wind picked up even more, telling him to get back inside before it rained. The needles died down as he walked back up the trail, as did his thoughts on the dead salamander buried in the creek.