[twwm] stack: a moment of connection - polaris

The atrium opens up wide before me, and gone is the pool which I had swam down into. The wall behind me is flat and engraved, overgrown and suffocated by the scrawled calligraphy of ferns and broad leaves. There is nothing to see ahead besides a dilapidated platform of stone, hovering silently. The bow quivers the strings of my soul again, and the energy of this place draws me in. I step to the platform - intricate strings and valleys of mosses mapping old crooked stone, an old man's teeth - and it lowers below me. We go, the stone and I, into the depths of a beating heart, and we are not alone. The blood and oxygen of this organ flows and trickles down the walls beside us, little prickles of water like shimmering traps, almost too faint to see.

My platform hits the ground with only a slight tremble, sliding smoothly into a groove I had not noticed before. We had reached the landing, the joining point for all the canals, and it was beautiful. Stretching out into the distance like a fine net, water glimmers and glistens with misty mournful sighs, little trickles and puddles cascading and colliding into one another. It puts me...on edge. I cannot describe exactly what I feel upon seeing the sight. It's the beauty of the ocean tide coming in, waves sweeping themselves off the sand to roar like monsters, and the knowledge of the death it could bring.This nervous system network is beautiful like a tangle of vines up a brick wall and fearfully built like a rat-king and its many many tails.

I have no choice but to continue on, as my companion - the platform - has left. I choose a stream all my own, slightly to the left and disconnected from the others. I place my paws carefully, not wanting to mess with the intersections of crossings in my path. The water leads me onwards to more and more streams and canals, all bubbling, babbling. The lines between them begin to blur as I tire if plodding along, the only sound nearly imperceptible trickling. I miss the chatter and click of birdsong around me, bugs trilling away in the dust.

These canals and their tunnel system make me feel trapped, burdened, and left behind. My trotting footfalls slow, and my head hangs low, swinging like a branch in the wind. I no longer look up, inquisitive about the world around me, but instead stare down at the stream I have picked, eyes glazed over with a mist I did not quite recognize. I continue traveling, and a large sound grows ahead of me. I do not recognize it at first, but as I listen, it is the trumpets of war, callers, and welcomes of battalions and plagues of soldiers. It is water crashing against itself, brackish and clear, groggy and awake. Seawater sweeps in, clear against muddy streams that rush out, and foam forms from their meeting. I watch it, and it is the first thing that truly catches my eye all along the blank paper trail on the way here.

Like a song, the sounds of the water creating new beings fills my soul. Little creatures shaped from sea froth and deep breaths of ocean billows dance on the foam streets. It reminds me of the city that was once near my home, full of people of all shapes and sizes. They seemed to gather together in clumps and groups, separating and then returning, an intricate dance. I remember wandering that city looking for someone to see me, someone I could feel akin to. The wide, open cavernous space that I am in feels like a chest, a ribcage. Someone breathes, and I breathe with them, the deep rising swell of air bringing more and more of my memory back to me.

Late nights wandering roads looking for travelers, finding those in need of warmth - as much as a ghost could give - or a listening (albeit invisible) ear. There was the day I had spent in the town, sitting with those ignored, and becoming unseen with them. My eyes opened as they closed, and I faded into my already translucent background, letting myself fade away as I dreamt of a life wandering among them. Instead, I was here, watching the brackish water mix with fresh streamwater, and remembering a life I no longer had. That was then, and this was now. I tried to shake the dancing of the seafoam away, forget what had happened, but the memories forced themselves into my mind, aching to be seen.

Evenings spent in the town streets, following the smell of bread, and watching as its creators pressed stamps to the top of the rounds, marking them from their bakery. A woman selling cheese milked her cows and goats, hands rough with age and work - like mine were. She looks up as I pass by, but I know she does not see me. I walk around, float to windows to peer in at the humanity going on. A child builds towers with wood logs in his room, a man holds the hand of his wife, laughing softly at a joke. A man kisses the cheek of his husband when he brings in the horse for the night. It’s a sweetly saccharine moment in my heart, strings playing to invisible rooftops when I feel tears begin to build in my eyes.

These people are living the life I wish I had had more time in. Loving each other, parent and child, spouse and partner. In an act of mimicry, two children clasp hands and giggle, running past me, through me. I am reminded once again in this memory that I do not belong, and that is when I hear it.

A soft, downy laugh. Like little pebbles sinking soft to the bottom of a creek, it is a baby, giggling. I creep to the doorway it is coming from, light on my paws even though I cannot be heard. The baby is sitting with her mother, clapping her hands and giggling. She shrieks with laughter when her mother pulls a funny face, and I have to step away, reminded of….of someone. Of the copper haired woman who showed up bloodied and hurt in so many ways more than skin-deep. I am reminded of the blanket she made, for the child we were never given the time to have.

The memory transports me, and now I am laying by the road, feet tucked underneath myself, watching for travelers. A weary pair comes up the road, a set of people in need of me. My mind is torn away from the thoughts of copper and moths, and I stand. Internally, in the future, I am yelling, screaming, begging to not have to see this memory again. This intertwined memory that connected me with humanity for a second more before I lost it all again, the shifting of the tides that brought me into a warm grasp of life only for it to pull back a moment later.

The travelers keep walking in my memory. One of them stumbles, trips, falls. Their friend picks them up. They keep walking. The person falls again, and doesn’t get back up. I am transported through time again, watching their partner bury the friend, and then I am building the cairn; stacking the rocks; filling the niches with mud and gravel; making it strong and sturdy and steady and safe. The one traveler left behind awakens to a rosy dawn alone, and next to my memorial to their efforts, their fight, their journey.

They weep, openly, and it is dirt and dust of the trail that smears when tears hit their cheeks. I curl around them. They cannot feel me, and the moment is severed. I am lost again, without the connection to humanity. The memory has ended, I realize, standing in front of a door shrouded in vines, a veil of dark ivy hiding the doorway’s face from the world. I am crying when I step through, but I do not look back.