A Canticle for Birth: Part IV

Part IV: A Bridge Stays

Trip and stumble 

Trip trip all along the path.

I'm getting weaker, thinking does not help but it cannot be stopped. Olives, warm fresh pita bread, dates and figs, cheese and fish what I wouldn't give for mother's pita bread. 

Trip trip.

Drip drip.

Water?

To the right. 

I haven't seen or heard the feline creatures since the village. It's uncomfortable where did they go? Why have they stopped?

I move towards the source. Through the fog I see it. Orange with a layer of film over the top. It snakes like a creek but no water runs. A bridge over it, dark and mossy some boards rotted.

This isn't water, its bacteria. Oh there may be water in this primordial ooze, but not something I want to drink. No fish either. Maybe I could transmute it or distill it to something drinkable.

Drip drip. 

Soft splash of a drop. From high in the canopy it came hidden in the murk above. What it is, I do not know. Mesmerizing swirls it makes in the dead creek. It looks like patterns on a quilt.

The film reseals and the drops fall again. Serene, quiet. This bridge is wrong. 

Queeya!

Sheet metal? maybe a bird? From across the bridge. I rise not daring to touch the ooze. This creek is not to be crossed. It is wrong.

"Oh first love when to that place we came, 

A bridge of me you made

Jubilant my heart we crossed and what was twain now is twined!" A sing song voice emanates from my neck.

"Why sing eyeball!" I shout slapping at my neck.

No reply.

I know those lyrics, A Canticle for Birth. The fishers wives' used to sing it on the eve before their husbands voyages. 

"It sounds like salvation." Another verse. Ves was singing it too. I didn't notice. Why that song?

Cross the bridge?

You will never be free from it if you do! A piece of me warns. 

I'll never be free anyway, this place keeps. Older than ancient, stretching endless never changing. Always changing. Here at the center. 

I touch the bridge rail. My heart is racing. 

"A bridge stays." The neckball speaks.

"A bridge sees." I counter. My heart sinks but my resolve hardens.

I take a step. Laws forsake me.