Prompt: at the pool's edge

At the pool's edge, a frill of opalescent tiles catches the last rays of the late summer sun. I watch as a line of ants marches along this glowing margin, hastily avoiding occasional rivulets, so intent are they on their far off destination. I press my back further into my lounge chair. I am determined to wring these precious few moments of the season from my tiny paradise.

Let this be a character study of a place, a time, so I will remember always.

I arrived after almost a day of continuous travel that began with a long train ride through the night. As we disembarked in the wan light of dawn, our ferry awaited, like a barely visible ghost, floating upon the still water of an unknown sea. I followed the line of passengers before me and found myself seated upon a worn wooden deck. Within an hour, the fogs of that early morning had lifted and once again I disembarked to find myself at the next leg of this journey: a bus ride that brought me here, over cobbled and unpaved roads, overhung with the canopy of a thousand trees and festooned with the heavy foliage of strange vines for which I had no name.

I came here to disappear, and disappear I did. I lost myself in long fecund days filled with the deafening song of creatures unseen, air almost too perfumed to breathe and sights only imaginable in the dreams of one intoxicated with life.

When I first arrived, I was greeted by a woman who introduced herself only as "Duke". She spoke fluently, but slowly, with a voice too deep for her diminutive stature and a soft accent of indeterminate origin. Duke led me past walled gardens both wild and manicured. She must have read my thoughts as we walked because she assured me, "there will be plenty of opportunity to enjoy the grounds".

Finally, we reached the gates of the main house. I feel can only relate a pale shadow of the palace in front of which I found myself. Not because it does not deserve to be described but because it truly defies words in any known language, or at least in the tongues with which I am familiar.