Sudden de ja vu hits me - out of no where - it strikes like hot white lightning between all three of my eyes. If I had hair on the back of my neck, I imagine it might be standing on end by now and I might not ever know why. Thick plumes of swirling, violet-black smoke billow off of my neck and shoulders and blister the clear air like drops of blood in water. And, from the corner of my third eye - I think I see blood on the woman in the water.
When our eyes meet, lightning strikes somewhere - not here. And for a moment, I am reminded of all the mindless madness my life founders on.
“Your eyes are very yellow.” I observe. (Like a rockfish, or a snapper) I think. My words are auspicious, my voice ever deep and soothing like lake waters. I turn to look at her approaching and realize it is not blood on her, but blossoms. “The stories these trees might tell us .. .. if we were meant to listen to them.” I bet she knows already, that I don’t have a story to tell her about these trees. She knows, she knows.
Why? Because we are not meant to know - this is a magic we are not meant to understand. I know this because I feel the same static deep inside my bones - of a magic that holds me captive the same way it held my father. I am the plaything. I am the pearl trapped inside of the oyster’s shell. It will take what it wants from me - then leave me with everything or nothing at all.
Today .. today it leaves me with endless intrigue. Today it makes me contemplative and fills me with nostalgia. Where are you from? Oh -- To know of trees that feast … -- She doesn’t finish.
Good, I don’t know how to answer that anyway.
Do you think they want to eat meat?
I look up at the trees and I see their withy branches raining red and bleeding their petals into the banks. Their undersong seems cheerful, all things considered. “I don’t know. I have a parable of the trees that I do know about.” I was born out of wild, licorice black magic. I came from beneath the rotting roots of a diseased tree, misfortune’s fool. It would be my wildest luck if the magic that consumed me - has found me here. My father rots in an oyster shell millions of moments away from me - I can smell his strange stink here.
I know it has followed me here.
“I was been eaten by a forest. Once.” It sounds like an easy death with how casually I deliver this. I hear no birds in this forest, so I wonder if the forest is listening too. I feel like my soul is in every piece of this place, bits of me growing in everything - my bones and my blood and my flesh; wood, water, and petals. The swan in the water is waiting for me, I don’t have to look at her to know that it isn’t enough - everything I have to say. It will never be enough.
“After that, my eyes opened again and suddenly I was much older. I was falling through the air, flightless, thoughtless, and then the sea caught me.” I remember the cold water most brilliantly, ice tearing through my skin - my glittering blood poured out of me as if I my body was commiting golden treasure into the deep.
“I would say it had to be winter.” Because the seawater was as biting as a tulip (you wouldn’t get that joke unless you were there) -- “, many other men fell with me, they were all eaten by the Nereid which lived in the sea.”
Except for me. But at the time, I was not just a horse - I was a universe crushing into the sea of another world, I was parting clouds and shaking the wind. “They gave me a different name than the one I have - they called me Viasýni.” My eyes go distant, I remember living in the sea.
My story wends directionless, watery, both in and out of focus, streaky at best. I tell her about eating fish for the first time and why I can not understand why trees would eat meat. I tell her about strange sirens that guided me to the shore - but the shore rejected me. I had to return to the sea with the Nereid and float on. “I saw seven moons come and go before I felt the ground beneath my feet again -” It is terrifying to know I floated like a buoy in the sea, guided by fishes and other natatorial efficacies.
The breeze shifts direction - it stokes the smoke off of my neck like a billowing fire catching heat. The way the petals drift across her skin reminds me of mid-summer when apple blossoms skate across the surfaces of puddles and other things. She reminds me of the water - I don’t know why. Is she made of gold? Or ivory? The light never settles on her - it just ripples and waves. I have to squint three different ways to see her when the sun is overhead.
"I do not think I am afraid. Are you?"
@ Sereia WOW THIS RAMBLES ON AND ON AND ON and on and on and on … …
