Part IX: Life
Alive. Still here somehow.
Hot. The water is hot, but my head is above it, resting on some solid surface.
My head throbs. I open my eyes, I'm half submerged and nude. Where have my clothes gone?
I feel sick and everything aches.
Oh I think I'm gonna-
I manage to puke outside the water. A mess of soupy acorns.
A hot spring, that's what I'm sitting in. I pull myself up and rise out of the water. The air is humid and warm. This isn't the lake, it's not even the forest. Not the one I was in anyway. A forest still, but different.
Impossibly high black walls stretch endlessly up, three of them, enclosing me in a triangle a few miles wide. Above a shimmering radiance, like stars that married water, and below that float the ruins of old stone buildings and rocks, paths floating, spinning in the air no doubt by foreign laws. All around me though on the ground level a mossy forest, primordial and neutral.
A light drizzle is falling no clouds in sight.
Different, not just the place. Me, I'm different.
I reach to touch my neckball, sealed shut.
It hasn't closed since it first appeared. I rise out of the water slowly and come to stand near a strange tree. Liquid in a hollow of the tree suspended by invisible forces reflects, I see myself in it. I look the same minus the swelling gash on my head.
More than the neckball.
A powerful feeling, I feel whole. I touch my sternum with both hands and take a breath. Something is right, so right, harmonic even, air in me, pure energy and life. I could dance with joy but I feel a little wobbly.
Is this it? The reason I've come?
Perhaps.
"Moo-oop boop!"
I turn startled. Headless with tall shoulders extending about to where the head should be a strange gollum of earth and root. It looks surprised by me then turns and runs.
"Ooooop!" It cries.
"Wait!" I shout back reaching a hand out and follow. I begin to run, but slow down immediately. I'll make myself sick again.
So childlike it was, if a gollum can be such.
I lose track of the gollum quickly, the way it weaves in and out of the trees and hidden paths. Faster than it looks.
Brrderder chee chee chee!
Birds. Not one, but many. I see a few fly by, they land and start again with another melody of cheeps and chirps. I could cry tears of joy, its the most normal thing I've experienced since I entered the glade.
I suppress the swell of relief inside me remembering to keep focus. I should remain cautious especially if I feel safe.
Through the trees I see it, a building. Detail grows as the trees thin and I approach. An eclectic mish mash of architectural styles, lacking elegance but not beauty. A truly odd if balanced thing.
The size of a small law house all and all. Stained glass windows, pillars and mossy overgrowths. A tree has fallen against the building, but done little damage. A small staircase leads to the main entrance.
Knock? Enter?
What to do, and what of my gollum friend? He did not enter here I would have seen I'm sure of it.
I knock and call out. Nothing.
I try the handle. Locked.
I look around for other doors.
Tric, drik, shhh, shh
Running water, a stream leads back to another building a short walk away.
Clean water? Food maybe?
One way to find out.
Not a building I realize more like a structure. No roof, stone brick, circular in shape with strange slotted windows and an arched entrance.
I enter. No floors just earth. Several fruit trees. Water pours from one of the walls and spirals to the center in a neat stream bleeding off occasionally to little pools or small irrigation systems for miniature gardens.
This place is holy, I can feel it.
Busted through a section of the circular structure it sits. An old fashioned steam shovel, like none I've ever seen, blue and smaller than it should be only about the size of a shed, attached to the end of its arm sits a strange black box. Oddly shaped the base of the steam shovel is and a little warped with crab like wooden legs to hold it up overgrown with vines. Hanging outside the shovel's operation center are some ugly clothes scuffed with coal and dirt. I put the clothes on begrudgingly. Then take a look back at the steam shovel.
Something about it…
Later, for now food.
A smorgasbord of fruits and veggies from the gardens and trees, and cool crisp water as fresh and clean as glacial melt. Delectable and succulent I could eat all day.
I eat more than I should, hopefully no more vomiting. Eating too much when starved is a bad idea.
There's a nice spot in the center of the building. Moss and vines. Like a nest. Having finished I move to examine it.
Mrrowaw!
A metallic creak and moan. The shovel is moving. I turn and fall into the nest, arms rise instinctively to protect face and torso. No magic shall save me now.
I wait for my end, but it does not come.
I lower my arms, the shovel has walked closer to me on its crab like legs and lowered its arm. At the tip where the shovel should be, instead held by a series of stone hands is the box.
But it is no black box. A camera longer than any I've seen and where the lens should be a blue eye. It looks me up and down.
Click! Click!
Blinks like it's shooting pictures. An expression of curiosity?
Mmyak?
It inquires with a metallic creak.
It lowers its neck.
An offer: you need help getting up? It seems to ask.
I accept and grab the large metal arm, it pulls me to my feet.
"Yooo Ooop!" The gollum comes running in unusually long arms waving above its headless body. It stops abruptly at the sight of me. Screams an ooo of some variety then turns around to run.
Rrrrruuuunnnk!
A low invasive and frightening rumble from the steam shovel and the gollum stops. Drops its arms dejectedly and begins walking back to the steam shovel.
Slow comprehension, begins to dawn.
I've seen this scene before.
You stop this instant! We have a guest, now behave yourself.
No words but that's what's happened. Mother and child.
Perhaps soil and air have not abandoned me.
"You're a god." I say she turns to look at me apologetically, "No, not a god, a Kami."
The gollum comes to sit poutily by her side.
"Both of you, two bodies, two minds, one spirit."
She sits, and the gollum kicks dirt clearly frustrated by the reprimand.
"I am Oez. It is good to meet you." I offer a slight bow.
The shovel bows its head kindly.
***
I'm unable to pick the lock to the building, I sleep in the nest with Earth child. I vomit in the night I must have eaten too much.
***
There's a cycle.
Day and night, but it's different. Dark and light, but sweeter. It's been several days.
I thought it was because I ate too much. Then I thought it might be the head injury. I'm still nauseous and prone to vomiting. No fever, but something must be going on.
No luck with the building.
Mother sky is helpful. When I look away she's able to complete incredible tasks. Tasks she shouldn't be able to achieve, but such is the way with Kamis I suppose.
Earth child follows me in my daily investigations. His curiosity and wonder is a joy to me, he can be a bit much sometimes, but I like teaching him.
***
A few more days.
Still susceptible to bouts of sickness. A small growth from the neckball, a plant of some kind.
I've done a walk around the perimeter. No way in or out the black walls impenetrable, and yet animals clearly enter and leave. Deer I saw a day ago. Now nowhere to be found.
Earth child knows his environment. He showed me a way up. Among the floating ruins and the changing sky paths.
There I find it.
A small section of the wall carved with three sigils.
Bridge.
A pregnant woman. (I recognize it as a fertility totem from the southern tribes.)
Ouroboros. The snake which eats itself.
A snake circles. That faerie may prove useful yet. These sigils mean something, I sense it. This is the place just beyond that wall, through these sigils what I have come for.
I consider it a long while but nothing comes to me. I descend and begin to gather things. Many ingredients there are here, not so sparse this place is. Rich and fertile.
My mother was an excellent chef. It was in her cooking she first learned to weave spells and it was over a stove and in the garden where she first taught me the same.
I cook at night. Mother Sky sits patient and happy, an occasional metallic creak from her. Earth child is fascinated by the process. Its fun to do something normal and see someone amazed by it all. his hands and his head are invisible. Neither of them needs to eat but they do, it's good bonding.
The building remains closed.
***
More days.
The neckball plant grows ever so slightly.
Mother sky is trying to tell me something. I don't understand it.
The building door was open, I had given up on it. A library not quite so vast as the the archive of my home but far more exotic picks on any shelf.
A Brief History of Time
This Stephen Hawking, an old law man. A novice he seems.
The sigils still sit in my mind. They are the way out.
***
A box full of white sticks with blue tips.
A strange morning greeting, from mother sky.
***
Pregnant.
I touch my stomach. The pollen. What strange laws.
Errrooonk.
A kind creak, she is comforting me, or attempting.
Earth child touches my stomach too.
Woozy. No words, just amazed silence and confusion.
At least I know why I'm vomiting.
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