October 10th - A Story, a dreaming... passages.
Ariel at ten, lay in the blue white square of moonlight carved onto her mattress by the undraped window.
She felt incredibly naked.. every follicle of her skin alive and striving to create electricity with the hair vibrating from her Goosebumps... But she wanted to lay uncovered.. in that moonlight. Caressed in the cold blue light. It felt pure, yet dark.. alive, frightening, awake.
While the rest of the world was sleeping.. oh some of them may be stirring, watching a late show, working the over night shift.. but were they truly awake?
Sometimes she wondered if she were all alone in this little prison of a world.. Her searching mind reaching and reaching and reaching for lost loves... memories fleeting, of something long ago, long before.. where other spirits mingled with her own.. a feeling of completion.. love, permeating her, and the hard cold grief of it's absence.. like the moonlight.
She knew, other children didn't feel like this. This was not natural.. she knew that when she talked about the things she saw, the things she felt.. that what other people responded with.. child or adult.. was at best a blank stare or patronizing gaze.. and at worst that cold wall of discomfort or outright fear slamming down against her.
Haunted by shadows, nightmares, and dark dreams.. she usually hid, hid beneath the covers.. hid as far down as she could.. not wanting to be easy prey for night's hunters... No one else could see them, but she could.. could feel them, hear them.. watching her. Mustn't shine too brightly.. have to quiet your inner voice.. or someone may come and silence it. Everywhere.. dark clinging, slithering.. watchers. Watchers. And maybe, somewhere behind them.. out there.. farther.. others like her. Other's that remembered.. that would know.. that could see her, that were awake.. awake in the dark. She remembered them.. so they must be. She could still feel their lingering touch.. the love, family. Within the tight walls she had to build, it was the memories that comforted her.
Later, she began to suspect.. they slept, slept sometimes in the people around her, afraid to wake.. or maybe silenced by the dark.
So she would start to whisper.. to people in passing.. with that inner voice.. wake.. wake up... wake!
And sometimes.. they would.. a little.. turn to look, catch her with the gaze.. puzzled, yearning. and she could feel them.. flicker, like a little flame.
And everywhere.. always.. she continued to search for answers.. all the books in the library, all the air currents.. the patterns in the leaves.. the movement of the clouds... Stranger's smiles.. lyrics of songs. Everything inside her stretched to listen and to learn and to hope.. somewhere there must be answers, how to find them, and how to go home again.
The strongest in her memory.. had been Wolf... the great silver gray form slipping through her thoughts.. the warm yellow eyes. Memories of twining chubby baby fingers in that thick gray fur. Strange and impossible memories.. impossible dreams, with that feeling, that feeling of pure 'rightness' this thing happened, this thing is happening.. Wolf is there... waiting.
Then the teenage years... And the journeying began. She had always done it, walker on the winds.. something similar to what the books talked about out of body experiences and guided imagery and hypnosis.. but what she did was different.. it was.. more real. And now, at 13, she conspired to experiment with friends.. Tired of only whispering... she started pushing. Spending many times running down the pathways of friends minds.. opening doors. playing, searching, calling.. calling... finding the familiar.. inspiring madness?... No it would have come anyways.. the schizophrenia.. that shattering.. the fragmentation, of her first lovers mind. She hadn't caused it. It couldn't.. shouldn't.. be dangerous, this want, her love, trying to connect, trying to awaken. She couldn't believe that, that those reality games they played had caused that shattering... no, that was inevitable. She had to be able to trust.. trust her instincts.. her memories.. too much evidence of what was real.
There was only once.. when she started to seriously doubt.. seriously seriously doubt.. and hope had started to run from her like blood from well opened veins.. 16, and she lay in her sleeping lovers arms, and she thought.. I'm mad, I've created this all, all my life, this elaborate fantasy.. like imaginary friends.. only layered and layered.. swearing to herself, that she had to know now, had to know absolutely know, that what her mind and soul told her was real.. and not fantasy. This conversation with self, in desperation.. was totally unspoken, completely internal. Yet her lover, who had been fast asleep, turned his head as if she had voiced the questions aloud, opened his eyes... and spoke... "Wait, wait for me ariel.. I love you, I love you, and it's just a matter of time, I'll find you, it's real.. it's all real." He had no recollection when questioned on it later.. no recollection at all.. and she knew that even though in their games.. that she had a found a gray Wolf running through her lovers mind.. that it wasn't he who was the Wolf, her Wolf, but that her Wolf had come there.. through those doors, to be with her. And know he had told her he would come again.. later.. and to be patient.. and she could feel him, stronger than ever before.. and she knew when even, in her twenties.. it would happen, she could see his eyes, his arms.. places, future places.
And one day.. she found him, and he knew.
Then there were two.
And now they search together.
I could say the end.. but really, it's only the very beginning. The beginning of a very strange and unusual story.
XOX
Katt