SHE’S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.
When I try to say ocean again, she smiles – quickly – and nods, and I feel a broad grin grow across my lips. The little flush of pride that burns up in my chest is probably overstated, and I should probably feel embarrassed about it, but I don’t – I don’t, because I tell myself that I have learned something (maybe several somethings), and the priestesses say that you should value learning anything, no matter what it is, no matter what you are when you discover it. It is the greatest task of life – of all your lives – to try to understand.
That is why, they say, we are born again as many different things, living or otherwise. How can you inhabit this world without understanding it? I thought it was simple, in my first life. (I was disciplined, dogmatic – driven to a fault. I could not see outside of what I wanted to.) Every subsequent one has proven me wrong, time and time again; I have learned to enjoy it, not fight it.
Your homeland- your homeland sounds so- different, she says, and I feel my head dip in the barest semblance of a nod. I agree – and I’m not sure that there’s anything else to add to it. There are some differences so broad that they evade comparison, some gaps so wide that they are insurmountable. Trying to describe my homeland, much less compare it to this place, is impossible. (My homeland is beautiful, so beautiful – but I know exactly enough about outsiders to assume that some of them would find it horrific.) But this place is alien. I was sure that the priestesses only transported me some distance away, but it doesn’t feel as though I am on the same world any longer.
She speaks of forests, then, though ones that she says might be smaller than my own. (I am so caught up in elation at seeing forests, other forests, natural forests – that I barely notice.) I stumble into a request before I can think about it. I wouldn’t normally, I’m sure; it wouldn’t be proper to make one of a perfect stranger, no matter how endearingly friendly this one appears to be. And – there is still that knight-voice in the back of my head, open-mouthed, persistent, all but yelling at me to be cautious, reminding me of the forest. Reminding me of my blood on the tip of an outsider’s spear; my body burnt until it is lifeless in an outsider’s fire. (I cannot tell I am a strangling vine wound around a tree or a woman in that one; I think they set me ablaze in both lifetimes, and, although I am sure that the smoke smelled different in both, and though I am sure that it felt different both times, the memories blend together in an ugly, muted haze. Even when I am eyeless. Even when I cannot truly feel the heat.)
Regardless – the words pop out of my mouth, however ill-advised. “Really? There are? I’d love to see them…could you- could you show me?” The words are out of my mouth for the briefest moment before I remember my manners; they are normally immaculate, and, if I could color from it, I’m sure that I would. (I feel a rush of heat regardless.) “Please?”
I shouldn’t be following strangers, probably, or trying to - but everyone is a stranger to me now. I still can’t wrap my head around it; I am trying not to think about it.
She tells me, then, that the ocean is made of saltwater. I wrinkle my nose, rather unable to wrap my head around the concept; that burning, biting sensation was salt, then? It didn’t taste like any salt I’d ever tasted before. “Salt…water?” I repeat, not quite sure what to make of the concept “Why…shouldn’t you drink it?”
I try to sound inconspicuous. Merely curious. Surely, there were no nasty side effects to speak of with something that sounded so innocent, even if it tasted foul – surely.
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"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
