Moonbeam

Anika. The most beautiful human I ever knew. My mind’s eye conducts vivid interjections of our time together, but what is a mind now? Time no longer exists as it once did. I can look in on Anika while peering through a membranous, fuzzy barrier. A colossal, echoing voice that at once sounds like music and like terror rips through me when I get too near the barrier. “You must have an architect’s key!” it booms superbly through me as I edge as closely as I can to Anika.

Archway County was a tired, overdrawn, touristically specious place to live and double such epithets if you were also made to learn anything in a school there. The downtown area, though beautiful and a gateway to the wild north, was missing depth. By that I mean the ability to reach a fulfilling, joyous connection with any one person. I had only been living in Archway a few short weeks when Anika plopped next to me on the bus and and offered me advice about how to be more strategic with my gaming and how to smile in a way more genuine that I had any prior experience with. At sixteen touch is a way to understand a person better and a kiss stops earthly time. Any time I was subjected to human cruelty, a necessity I could never understand, Anika protected me. We loved camping together, paddling into the middle of a serene lake on an August night to behold the wonders of the moon, listening for an owl or two, Anika’s most beloved of earth’s array of splendid creatures.

In early September Anika and I decided to paddle deep into the lakeland wilds to camp on a secretive island on Cobalt Lake. It wasn’t until after the sun went down that I realized we had run out of firewood and had not yet had dinner. The lake was somewhat windy but I wanted to make our connection stronger by rallying all my strength and confidence to brave the lake for firewood if only to see this spectacular woman fed and beaming. She was hesitant, worried. I was intent on proving I was stronger than that. The last thing I remember about the earthly plane was was how the rain became painful and the previously friendly lake had become cunning and lethal.

The canoe collects dust in the old garage while I watch Anika sit on her bed and stare at the hardwood floor, tears streaming onto her bare feet, hair greasy and unkempt. What’s different now is I can see the scenes in her mind flash like short, sepia films that carry no language but the universal flow of emotion. I can feel her aching pleas for freedom from the burdens of numerous emotions, all of them heavy and audacious.

I hover often around the translucent membrane, screaming for the kind of mercy normally reserved for those with power, influence and charisma. Eventually the colossal, ancient voice addresses me in a way more felt than understood and explains to me that dimensions are not prisons, only space. “An architects key is merely a plan, a plan to create ripples and patterns that change the time space continuum. The human mind filters this through ego, but the animal mind knows abject power is not the only blueprint.” It seems I may have already discovered the secret to the architect’s key because after what felt like too much time even though time did not exist here my consciousness was awash in endless colours, colours my old body could not have perceived.

Whatever I’m struggling to escape is hard and encompassing. I struggle to push the shell away from my tightly contorted body parts. Rocking back and forth I eventually free myself. The first thing I see is a wall and brown and white feathers obfuscating my view of anything else. Time seems to apply again because after what feels like ten minutes the wall of delicately patterned feathers is replaced with two huge, sincere amber eyes and a mouthful of shredded snake.

Childhood was different as a member of the class Aves, a term I remember Anika used to help describe to me the scientific terminology for birds. Wait. I remember Anika. Why do I remember this? What purpose does it serve me to remember anything in the material dimension?

The day we learned to fly I fell repeatedly onto the floor of the big wooden, human structure, empty but for rotting hay and massive spiders that served as filling midday snacks while we slept huddled together. The last time I fell I couldn’t get up again and mother, said she had to move on. My sibling had left the nest and now I was food. Strangely all I thought about while working through my pain in that desolate, wooden cave was Anika.

I awoke in a warm blanket under a light, being examined by a face I recognized. “Anika!” I loudly exclaimed, unbound by human stench, human reach. “Loud for a young barn owl in the middle of the day!” she said, smiling, while she stroked my feathers and adjusted the tiny splint on my leg. Every day Anika brought me food and love and in return I did everything I could do to keep seeing her smile. Anika was now in her late thirties and her smile was even more beautiful, even more deep and galactic. She had clearly inherited the house which was empty of anybody else but a spirited, loyal and painfully dense golden retriever. She’d often be gone sometimes for whole days at a time it felt like, her phone ringing endlessly whether she was home or not. I would catch bits and pieces of these phone conversations, centred around “conservation laws”, “field studies” and “population management”. She was often emotional.

After many examinations of me Anika concluded I couldn’t fly because of a deformity in my right wing and openly discussed the idea to me of placing me in a wildlife research institute but when I looked in her eyes she’s renege, hold me tight and weep gently and tenderly into my feathers as I nuzzled and plucked at her hair. “I know!” she shouted suddenly making me flap and flail on the couch. Despite her knowledge of bird species she seemingly forgot how keen my sense of hearing was it when she got her excited. “I’ll bring you, smart and courageous you, to one of the conferences. You’ll get people to see why birds of prey are so important to the food chain, heck, why bird species are important altogether!”. She picked me up, beaming her moonbeam smile while she held me up the ceiling and hugged me tenderly and kissed my little head.

After a few conferences and information sessions for curious tourists and families, Anika never stopped smiling. Perched at the bow of her canoe in the twilight I knew I had changed the pattern. One of endless patterns we help the ancients decipher.