Here's summer, sorry it took so long, but the internet's been a crappy beyotch with me lately. And school's starting on Tuesday. I'm happy in an unhappy way. :()
Part Two: Summer
1. The Eyes of the Sky...
While the eyes of the sky watched them, Aerrow and Finn and Radarr watched the sky. They were climbing up the mountainside and they were growing more and more winded by the moment. Salt gathered at the orifices of their bodies and blisters clustered at their feet. The rich and beautiful smell of pine filled their nostrils; the trills of birds filled their ears. Pain filled their sense of feel. Longing filled their sense of soul.
Finn longed for a good meal, some sleep, and the golden beaches of Tropica.
Radarr longed for a banana.
Aerrow longed for Piper...
There was little time left for sunshine; night would fall soon. They'd searched the whole of the valley and found nothing, save the still smoking remains of the Condor. Junko and Stork seemed to have taken matters into their own hands...or whatever you call their appendages...and wandered into the woods. Deciding that Piper was the priority, Aerrow had jerked Finn and Radarr up the Sliabs, aiming for whatever was beyond them. But evening was coming fast, and in one of his rare bursts of reason...
"Aerrow...we have to stop. It'll become too dark to climb."
The red-head turned around with an equally red face. "Oh, fine," he grumbled at last. Searching the woody mountain for shelter, they eventually stumbled across a tiny cave that felt warm and felt safe. When the moon finally rose above the mountains, a pearl on the skin of the sky, it shimmered and winked.
Aerrow walked out into the woods while Finn and Radarr snored. He gazed across the valley and put his hands on his hips. He watched the twin moons, one in the sky above, one in the lake below. Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will rang through the forest, and somewhere, the loon's haunting call echoed across the wood. Feet scurried over the fallen leaves. An owl's wise eyes drilled into him from a few yards away, and then the great wings fluttered, and it was gone. He breathed in the clean air and counted stars, before slipping back inside to allow sleep to claim him at last.
...
The sky has eyes.
You don't do anything without being seen. A million stars, glaring at you by night, Argus-eyed. Or the single orb of a sun, like a Cyclops, staring you down come daytime. Should it ever be cloudy, then the clouds will keep watch over the earth below.
Living in Atmos, where the horizon is constantly below you, rarely above, you are always under surveillance. There are no secrets here. Everything knows everything, and no one knows nothing. The obviousness of many things is at once painful, and beautiful.
It's obvious that you can't be young forever...yet we pretend you can. It's obvious that the world will not stop for you...yet you hope it will. It's obvious that Aerrow loves Piper, but he's not saying anything. And they call me stupid, Finn will often grumble.
The best things in life are always bittersweet.
...
2. Honey
In one of her frequent bursts of unexplained phenomena, nature made honey.
Well, she made the bees, and the bees made honey.
Honey never spoils.
This storyteller wonders why honey never spoils. Perhaps it has something to do with its chemical composition, in which case this storyteller will admit it's above her pay grade. Whatever that means. But in her words, honey will not spoil because it is pure. Honey is the stuff of nature; you can almost taste the flower from which it has come. If you've never licked honey off of the waxy comb, fresh from a bee's hive, then you've never tasted heaven.
Her eyes were the color of honey, and they never spoiled. Like the amber that survived millions of years, often trapping hapless insects within, her irises would forever trap him inside them. He'd die within and die happy, like the bee that dies drunk on the petals of the sweetest flower on earth.
So the next time you pour this beautiful amber into your drink, or slather it onto your toast, remember: honey is forever.
So is love.
Maybe the two are meant to be connected.
Maybe nature is trying to tell us something...
...
The air was hot and it made things shrivel away with its Midas-like touch. Only, unlike Midas, who turned his wares to gold, this pungent and hot summer day turned the grass to hay and the air to water. Wildflowers cringed from the sun and begged for shade; if you lay down and listened, you would've heard their voices whisper and plead. The thunderstorm had never happened; it had been a dream.
Finn stumbled along behind Aerrow, and Radarr stumbled along behind Finn. They stopped every few minutes to rest. The steady incline of the mountain was taking its toll on everyone. And the peak was so bloody far away...
There had to be something easier.
The world was awake and it was alive; hot, but alive. The ground seemed to pant and heave, every moment a painful one, every hour desperate. Night seemed too far away, and the next rain even farther. Only the creek seemed happy, and all the leaves turned downwards in envy. They curled at the edges in indignation, and would've turned green, if they weren't green already. Something else in the forest moved, other than Aerrow and his posse. A deer? A bear? The wind? It seemed to scamper.
A squirrel dashed across the earth in panic, its heartbeat racing, but no one save the squirrel heard that. Close behind it, the fiery red blur of a fox, which soon turned even redder, as the blood of another kill splattered the undergrowth.
The heartbeat stopped.
Radarr spiraled up Aerrow's leg to perch on his shoulder, quivering in fear. At least Track Beasts didn't live this far up a mountain.
The fox turned with golden eyes and red stained lips. Perhaps it was just him, but Aerrow swore he was smiling.
Smiling. And saying something.
Nothing is forever.
...
Nothing.
Is.
Forever.
His footsteps pounded those three words into his head as he moved. The rustling of the leaves, Finn's painful panting, Radarr's whines, they all seemed to form those three brutal words. And that gory smile of the fox, embedded into his memory like some ugly painting. The pink gums and life-stained teeth flashing, the black lips and crimson fur.
A saintly cloud floated in front of the sun for a few wonderful moments, and the trio stopped.
"Aerrow, we can't climb this," were the first words out of Finn's mouth. Aerrow frowned.
"Yes we can."
"Dude, there's snow on the top of this thing. It'll take us weeks." The blond wanted to shake his friend by the shoulders, but he was too tired. Instead, he threw a rock at his foot. And missed. Lately, his aim had deteriorated; Piper had said something about how he was just getting old. Ha-ha, real funny.
The saintly cloud died a martyr and disintegrated; the trio stood and continued. Finn scoured the mountainside for something, anything, that would help him along; a stick for leverage, or maybe Piper, who was the one person who could dissuade Aerrow from this impossible quest. Then again, she was the reason for the quest in the first place. So finding her sort of proved the whole thing redundant. Whatever that word meant. He'd used it before; it was cool and slipped off of his tongue. Most of the words he didn't know did that. Just sort of...glided like butter.
His piercing eyes found the timberline, where the trees stopped and nothing but rock jutted up. There, perched like a god, was a dark hole, sort of like a cave. Or a tunnel. In a sudden burst of inexplicable strength, Finn dashed up to Aerrow and jerked his head towards the orifice. Aerrow smiled a sweaty smile, before clapping his friend on the shoulder. "Good work," he spluttered, before veering towards it erratically. Finn rolled his eyes and followed, something telling him that this was going to be a looooong day.
...
Everything has its advantages and its disadvantages. Even war. Even death. Sometimes, we are too blinded, too overwhelmed, by just the positive, or just the negative, that we lose sight of the whole.
Speaking of blindness...
Take the dark, for example. Many a time I have contemplated, (I, a meager storyteller!), what the world would be like if, for a day, everyone was deprived of eyesight. Of course, this is all theoretical; I don't literally wish for everyone to lose their eyesight. But indulge me. Imagine a day where you can't judge anyone by their cover because, frankly, you can't see it. Where all conversations must be held in the dark. Where your hands are your eyes and the rest of your senses must be pushed to their absolute limits.
You notice things. Like how rain on a tin roof seems to sizzle like meat on a grill. How the breathing of a person can be the greatest lullaby of all. How the stars pulse at night. The world is a beautiful place, not just in sight, but in sound, smell, touch, and so many other things. Imagine meeting a person for the first time, without your eyes for judgment. Whether we admit it or not, sight is the first thing we process, the first thought that channels through our heads, and the first indication for ourselves as to what the person will be like.
There would be so much we could realize.
So much to learn.
Both about the world...
And ourselves.
...
The tunnel was black; you couldn't see your own hand in front of you if you tried. Which all three of them did, I may assure you.
The emptiness of it. The void. An abyss. Darker than the Black Gorge, even. At least, there, you could look up and hope to see the sky. Gray and distant and thin, but the sky, nonetheless. Here, it was the same all around. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Nothing is forever. Nothing is the only thing that is forever.
And everything is never...
When light did finally appear, it was beautiful. Honey colored. They could all taste it, but Radarr saw it first. He raced ahead of the others and peered out of the opening, to see the thin ridge down which they would have to descend. He saw the golden land before him, with the charcoal smears of ancient ash and knobby bushes of sage and bramble. The sky was blue. Such a beautiful blue. It seemed to move.
Aerrow and Finn caught up eventually. Aerrow drowned. Finn resurfaced.
Either way, they were all caught up in the desert's mystique.
This time, Aerrow went down first, his feet slipping, eyes smarting from the sudden appearance of light, you know? The day may come after the night, but it comes gradually. Here, the dawn broke in an instant, blossoming in a second, blooming in a few carefully spaced moments. Finn followed, regretting it.
"Man, I'm gonna fall!"
"Don't talk nonsense."
"I'm gonna fall!"
"No, you won't."
He didn't fall, of course. They touched down on the ground. Gold rose up to fill their nostrils and make then sneeze. Radarr got the worst of it, seeing as he was the shortest. His coat was soon home to grains of dust, fleas, and just about every other infliction animals with coats have. The place filled them with its aura and raised their spirits, after all that darkness, all that night. It is darkest before the dawn, and what a dawn this was.
It was about noon when Finn spotted the brown blotch in the distance that looked like civilization. "Think anyone can ever live on this place?"
"Maybe." Aerrow turned for it, and Finn had no choice but to follow him. Radarr had scampered up his friend's shoulder, the dust on him driving him mad. He itched. He scratched. He snapped and bit with rabid fury; it looked almost scary to Finn. So he looked up and tried not to pay attention to what was going on below. So his foot decided to bring him back down by stumbling on a rock.
"OOOF!"
Aerrow whirled around in a tiny dust storm and laughed.
"If fot fuffy."
...
It was hot. Torrid. Horrible. Radarr had done away with his vest, and Aerrow and Finn wished they could do the same, but they were far too modest. "Waaaateerr..." was the word they rasped. The mountain stream seemed an age ago. An eon. A lifetime. You could live through an eon, but never a lifetime; you could die in a lifetime.
They hoped the town had a pump.
Their hopes were not fulfilled.
The trio reached the town with despair in their minds and hearts. They needed to find her. They needed to find water.
The town was small, old, and should it be described in one word, that word would be secretive. The air was arid. It seemed to crack. The old wood moaned and the gate shrieked in agony on its hinges.
A tumbleweed rolled by. The entire thing looked as though it was from some old western film Finn had rented online.
The signs read things like, "BEER. FIVE CENTS!" And then, hanging on an old hitching post, "WANTED: BILL BLUFFS, FOR THE MURDER OF THREE YOUNG RANCHERS AND THE HOLDUP OF TOWN BANK. IF FOUND, REPORT TO OFFICIALS IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT ENGAGE!!" This was underlined twice. Everything was capitalized. Someone wanted to make a statement. "REWARD FOR VALID INFORMATION-" They bolded the "valid" for a reason..."-200 GOLD COINS."
"That's a lot of money," Aerrow mumbled.
"I agree. 'Murder of three young ranchers.' And he looks like a madman, too."
He's got a rugged eye and an unshaved chin. His hair is long and his face is dark. You can see him with a gun pointed at a young man sniveling on the floor. The gunshot echoes through time. The fox's evil smile returns. That red-rimmed, evil little grin that will resound through the ages. Like a gunshot.
And to think. He did it to feel the crispness of cash beneath his fingers and above his palm. To feel the cold rattle of coins in his pocket and the satisfaction of counting his wares over and over, knowing he'd done it. Aerrow wondered if he'd ever been caught. What was his sentence? Another image flitted into his mind: A swaying body, darkly clothed, with a brown sack over its head, and a noose drawn tight 'bout its neck. The gallows, still and silent. The sheriff, looking grim, and the executioner, looking like nothing through his black hood and eye holes. The lever is just pulled, and the rope is still quivering. The dust still settling from the sudden dropping of the floor.
He could almost feel his own neck being wrung. The shortening of his breath. That sudden realization of death, and the erratic movements as the brain loses its oxygen. And then...
...the stillness.
And its the stillness that scares him the most.
...
3. Should the world end...
The rain came unexpectedly in the desert, as all desert storms do.
All of a sudden, the blue skies clouded over, and the water came pouring down. Lightning struck the ground and singed it. The flowers that used to not exist existed, their seeds fed by the downpour. Floods built in distant canyons, only to wash off of the terra's edges that were not seen. Sand turned to mud. The cacti bloomed, and animals came out, shaking their heads in disbelief. You could almost hear the hare whisper to the partridge, Can you believe it? I didn't think the rain was due for another week. Good thing, though, because those youngsters just eat more by the hour.
And the partridge just might coo back, Oh, I hear ya, lady. But the rain will do us good. The insects will come out and the berries will grow. We will live to see another summer.
They found refuge in one of the town's buildings. The one with the stablest of roofs and windows to look out of. The rain seemed to rejuvinate.
Aerrow fell asleep clutching Radarr in his arms. Finn fell asleep clutching air and himself. He barely slept, though. He preferred to watch the rain come down and listen to the drum of it above his head.
Well, now, he thought to himself. This is nice. And then his eyes closed, but he didn't dream. Just lay there with closed eyes and open ears. The world flowed into him through his ears. And the night came.
...
Morning rose like steam from the depths of evening.
After the rain.
It's a label put on laundry detergents that smell good enough, but that's what they smell like, you know? Laundry. Sharp and artificial.
The real deal is much better. It's musty yet clean, intoxicating, enveloping, and it makes you swoon as if you are drunk. Breathing in is heaven and breathing out is a curse. You can't get enough of it; it braces you and sends thrills up your spine.
In the city, its the smell of wet asphalt and wet rubber, wet metal and wet concrete, wet humans. You sleep longer and everything feels damp. In the wood, its the wholly natural smell of damp leaves, soaked earth, and air so thick you could cut it into pieces and pocket them. But in the desert, its everything. The rustic ancient ritual of rain in the desert is as sacred as it is beautiful, and it will continue.
...
Finn got up early.
Wait...
Finn got up early?
Well, I don't believe it either, but...moving on. He stepped out of the house and looked at the changed painting before him. Gold had been replaced with emerald; the sage's smell magnified a hundred times by the damp. He thought he heard voices, but perhaps it was just the smell of everything and the sight of everything that was making him think these things. He could've sworn, however, that he heard Piper's laughter, somewhere in the sky.
Back inside, Aerrow's leaf colored eyes fluttered open, and soon, Radarr was up as well. They stood together and faced the dawn together and smiled together.
It was a new day.
Perhaps, the one where they'd find her.
...
Should the world end, and everything we know disappear, what will things be like?
Will the sky become green and the grass blue? Perhaps the changes will be more subtle. Imagine a world without love. Without hate. Without emotion or feeling or sense of being. There is only the act of being, but not the realization.
Will there still be stars, I wonder.
They say the more stars, the better. I agree.
Stars are beautiful things...
Should the world end, I suppose I have only one wish: that whoever ended it all leaves the stars in place.