Flash Fiction- "Hat"

Jay Lake is having a flash fiction contest based off a photo. So I wrote something. Enjoy!



Hat

I wait on the shore of this waterway, wondering what shape I have become. Wondering who will find me next. Wondering what life will hold in store.

As I wait, I think of what I have been. So many changes, so many eras, so many adventures. Who would imagine a hat could be so many things?

I have made myself tin to ward off the fears of a bearer and of iron to ward off an enemy's blows. I've ridden high on the heads of proud soldiers as they fought their brothers across a line of blue and grey and caressed the silken strands of a young Manchurian concubine who would against all odds manipulate her way into becoming an empress.

I remember an early time when, through shifts and morphs, I turned into a sailor's cap. He swore so many times to stop, and yet. He would pull me from the shelf, don me once more and we would set sail over a thousand tales full of giants, monsters, living islands and fish. What fun we had until the day a stray breeze snatched me over the water to a new home.

My color has often shifted in my quest to please. Yellow for the gangly fellow with the pet monkey. The black of night for a tormented mustachioed man who lived only during the hours which saw no sun. The bright colors of a hundred fruits for a smiling woman who danced.

Once, in the snowy days of childhood stories, I lived atop the head of a magic man. Not real magic, of course. Those things are reserved for gods and objects. But he saw in me the dream of greatness and pulled forth rabbits and flowers until some children took me while he slept. They found in my silky blackness a different dream, and for a time I brought life to their jolly friend, straining my will to make coal lumps see and a heart of ice beat strongly.

But even I cannot fight the changing of seasons and the way that children outgrow their dreams. And as they moved on, so did I. To the joyful play of a rhyming cat. To the bonnet of a woman captured in precious strokes of paint admired even today. To the plaid cap of a brilliant sleuth, whose revelations were astounding to listen to even while the smoke from his pipe seeped as it did through my very fibers, an unpleasant but necessary price to endure. I would sigh with joy at all of the things I have been, could I but sigh.

And now, from the banks beyond my view, I hear footsteps approaching, crunching the gravel, strong and sure. Who will find me here, in exactly the place that I am meant to be found?

Please, my friend, tell me what you see in me before you put me on. Tell me what I will become. Tell me what you dream for us to be together.


B