Fiction Friday!!

I've been writing other stuff lately, as writers tend to do...

I know there's other writers on here too, so I reckon a Friday fiction slot might be fun and give everyone a bit of bog reading.

If you're a 'closet' writer, out yourself here on a Friday.

I'll get the ball rolling with 'The Rider'

*Beneath a canopy of grey on streets of grey the rider glides out, chrome reflecting the gunmetal light of dawn, slim tyres effortlessly swerving the glittering jewels of shattered glass that decorate the pitted path.
His chilled fingers fan a lever stamped with a winged wheel, the gears click with buttery ease, and measured force on the pedal propels him on through the dank air.
Through the industrial fringe he flies, past silent mills and metal grills and dog barks from littered yards and blackbird song from a telephone wire above the rain slick brick and tile, the rider escapes, mile after mile, to the empty places beyond the sleeping streets, to where the black tarmac writhes upwards through hill and field, crag and dale, climbing to the clouds that bow low in deference to the rugged crown of dark peaks.
Years have given the rider speed, hours and yards and days and miles and year upon year, the wheel turning, a rain slick chronometer measuring strength and distance and time.
Time has weathered the rider as the wind weathered the rocks at Brimham, the crag at Arncliffe, as the water carved the gorge at Malham, the falls at Aysgarth.
All that is soft worn away, scoured by the years on the road, the burning sun and knives of wind, grinding rain and frosty chisels, leaving only that which can endure, the clints and grikes of time set stark and pure in his valleys of muscle, sinew and bone, flesh now granite, a wind scoured sculpture of living stone.
The reward for his sacrifice of time and pain on the road is endurance and strength, slipped like fillets of steel between muscle and bone, gifts from whatever long forgotten gods still dwell in the lonely high passes, endurance and strength granting access to emptiness and solitude, the right to soar high over soft, fecund dale and chuckling peat-bronzed brook, high where all is course and hard, where sheep flee the hiss of tyre on brittle tarmac, tatty white clouds bounding and bleating across smoky gorse, then halt in retreating to glance back with slitted eye as the rider glides by, onwards, onwards.

On he rides, always climbing, steady, unrelenting, the miles eaten with relish, the road fading behind yet looming ahead, and now the real climb briefly shows her blank face, through veils of ragged mist, her skirts of gaudy heather entwined in a threadbare ribbon weaving up, up into the clouds.
The rider passes a hand once more across the gears, click click, the metronome changes pace, but the speed remains, cross the juddering bars of cattle grids and past fossilised telephone poles weeping tar, the barbed wire flaunting hanks of wool, fluttering like bunting, curlews cry mournful warnings across the blasted heath.
Squalls buffet the rider from left to right, go back, go back, he presses on, tasting a hint of the sea in the rain hissing over him.
The shower passes, clouds parting, stray rays of a blind sun searching the moors in watery shafts, never finding the rider but briefly caressing the road ahead, transforming it from grim black to blazing gold before drifting on, as the clouds close ranks, banishing the gilt intruder to the heavens and restoring tarnished pewter to the earth.
The rider reaches the point on the road where the sun had burned. All is wet and grit, the crumpled feather of a moorland bird, a frayed length of blue twine, and then gone, briefly a memory, quickly forgotten, swallowed by time.
A lumpen bridge jealously guards quicksilver trout in it's shade, the fast water impossibly clear, giving no reflection, no sense of depth. The fish seem to glow, suspended in quivering air, slivers of burnished foil dancing in the shadows. The rider passes above, the fish are gone, now there is only the climb.

The world shrinks to a strip of road, a wheel, two gloved fists gripping gleaming metal, a thudding heart.
Time slows, almost stops.
Leaden limbs grinding, oiled chain slowly turning, the rider winches himself onwards, upwards, past wind withered hawthorn and gap toothed wall, dying bracken, waterfall, a ram's skull grins mockingly from amongst rotting reeds as the road turns on itself, twisting like a broken spine.

It ramps up suddenly, a dark wall barring his way, a silent beast looming in the grey declaring 'you shall not pass'. The winged lever can help no longer, there is nothing machine can do. The rider does the only thing he can, he attacks. Lunging forward from the saddle, taut tendons, flexing steel, a soaring dart piercing the beast with his precious gifts of strength and endurance, he skips gracefully upwards, dancing lightly from pedal to pedal, soaring higher, faster, the beast is defeated, and now the clouds crowning the mountain are close enough to touch, the swirling mist mingling with the sweat trembling on his furrowed brow, anointing him, and the clouds part like heron wings in submission to the rider's right to be there, his prize the right to gain more height, the lofty still heavens above the writhing murk of the peak, and the wings fold round him in a chill embrace, and the rider climbs on, leaving no trace…

And all is still. The wind mutters softly among the crags and fumbles in the heather, searching sadly for a lost thing it cannot recall. Pools of shade in forgotten vales fill with encroaching darkness, shadows succeeding where light has failed, but there, far distant, a last shard of the dying sun glimmers on speeding chrome and copper skin, the rider making his descent, a wheeled Lucifer cast down from on high screaming silently to Earth. The wind of velocity bellowing in his ears, the rain flailing bare flesh, but his eyes pierce the gloom and find their mark, the winking lights of a distant village, a refuge from the mountains wrath. He points his wheel, releases the brake, hurtles onward.
*
tl:dr >>>>>>>>>>>>