Adventure Story

We all blinked into the raw sun. Rays shimmered through crystals that melted on our hot cheeks, ruddy with endurance and all the grim peering into ordered schedules, isolation. Lambasting identities with solitary confinement: Who are you with most everything taken away? All the relays of self, synapses snapping in conversation among so many now absent—the silence offers only the abundance of itself and no opinions, no reply. Yet in the sun, we find ourselves reformed with everything we thought was lost or taken away. What beckons is some new wholeness if we can bear the sudden strangeness of ourselves in the opening hours that keep caring. What is emerging is an immense array of all we recognize and much we don’t, but contemplate in the rising light.

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It was a rainy day. Another sign, she thought, that she was on the wrong path. Wet and cold to the bones. She trudged forward, growing muddier with each step. Flat and empty. Adventures, she knew, were all full of magical assistance: beautiful swords emerging from the lake, protective spells or amulets granted by ethereal assistance. She looked around. Everything fused into a gray blur. Lifeless. She stepped forward, and stepped again. The path turned and began to descend. She nearly slipped on an eroded slant but caught herself and found the stable footholds by going slowly. The conscious cadence began to fill her with warmth. The trail opened onto a broad meadow. As she made her way through the expanse, she heard rushing water and soon came to a river raw with fresh melt. She walked and began to dissolve, her limbs turning into currents, her heart throbbing through the rapids. She unbecame. And rebecame as the turning blade of blue gathering and gathering and gathering to the sea.