some few evenings later, she experiments with interludes.
under the deep violet sky, an undulating river of sparkling stars, she spreads a blanket on her veranda. the forecast predicts a lightning storm over the valley, but unlike the oil-slicked streets of the city, the air smells nothing like approaching rain. instead, flowering melons, blueberries, and tomatoes perfume the dewy night.
she sits on the edge of her veranda steps, and stretches her legs, tired and cramped from the day's farming. to her right, her canine companion rests his head between his paws, and lazily flops the brush of his tail back and forth. he wonders why his master stares at the sky, when the sky is only good for dropping water and light to the earth. those lights above are too far away. he knows, because he's called to them many nights, but they've yet to fall to the ground. the lights are like not-his-master humans. they act like they never hear him when he needs them most.
to her left, she pays homage to her past life in the city, with a freshly uncorked bottle of wine. no cursed corporate blue symbol adorns this bottle's label, as she purchased it from the bartender at the saloon. while not top-shelf material, like the ports and brandies and liquors the bartender keeps high, the wine's simple label, with its branches and leaves and flowers flourishing off the image of a gnarled trunk, takes the woman to simpler, unburdened thoughts. a drink begins with the label, after all. now, she knows she'll sleep past her alarm the next morning, but the bottle, half of its contents already warming a dip in her core, begs for its finish, and the stars keep winking, alluring in their trance over her. sleep eludes her, as though sleep itself chases the heavens too.
ahead, past the fireflies flaring and receding between her crops, the river babbles its praise of the night reflecting on its body. like the woman on the veranda, it relishes the sensual sight of the sky, a view so unlike anything the water's ever seen in its journey from city drains and gutters to the teeming, crystal-clear banks of the valley.
in this way, the land around her speaks in stylized, personal voices, voices that remain hushed while the sun proudly bares itself in the sky. only when the moon casts the hem of its stardew dress across the heavens, does true quiet finally set in. for the first time in the day, she can hear herself and her thoughts. her exhausted body struggles to stay awake, but it fights hard to listen to the night's whispers.
this, the murmurs settling between the trenches of her lulling doze, is the quiet she has forgotten.
at the same time, the silence gives voice to the shadows in the hollow. the tears she bottled up in her chest mount their pressure as each nod of her head bares her secrets to the clarity of her thoughts. so expunge them, she thinks. she never cried back then, and without privacy, won't cry now. yet, without those tears, she is a husk in which the quiet echoes, and she has forgotten how to fill in the void with anything beyond anger toward others, or frustration toward herself. no wonder. no trust. no dream.
but her body has begun to remember, in spite of the hollow. magic and fairy cheers have begun etching dreams back into the faded slate of her memories. the book a boy lent her resuscitated the play and pretend of her childhood building blanket forts and donning towel capes. valley fruits, both wild and grown, burst into sweet juices and colors she's never tasted from the supermarket, while crisp vegetables echo delicious crunches into the back of her throat and deep behind her ears. taste and sound and vision have revived in her senses these past few months.
that is the effect of people reaching out to her. that is the effect of the kindness within a prayer. kindness that begins as a seed within the chest of one old man, then germinates into kindness in his friends and their families, which they nurture through the years until kindness bears fruit—fruit that she grasps in the form of a remembrance, and she promises, someday, she too can be kind again.
she sips her wine, a deep red to almost black blend of grapes, cherries, and rhubarb, and reflects. the city does its best, as it did with her, to fill in the void. it prescribes hot bodies between sheets, lying kisses, satisfaction in the workplace, cold coin and sweaty bills for what it believes is the dream home. when none of these work, as they inevitably don't, the city then recommends a selection of spirits or smokes. at that point, there's no turning back. the haze of spirits and smokes lays down layer after layer of forgetfulness and obsession. soon, you can't live without their quieting blanket, you can't feel anything better than the comfort of their whispers, and the days past as you fade away. the city abandons you. life abandons you. you abandon you.
she knows people who have been abandoned. some, due to faults lying outside the scope of their control. others perceive the valley as their prison, the void between the bars leaking their dreams ever toward the city, devilish temptress from which she recently sprung free. people are the same no matter where they come from, lost people, so lost in themselves and so scattered across their own breaths that, there's nothing they can do except wait for their pieces to come back together again, if they're so lucky. like the hush of the sky and river, they too do not speak until night blots out the proud sun. then, and only then, do they think of the city as their panacea.
she used to be one of them, and from her patch of quiet, a sanctuary detached from the hollow, whispers this assurance—that you are not alone—to the sky. she raises her glass to them, and sips the night away.
