The Pole Shift

Sean

Halcyon days. They were the best days of his life. Those few weeks, where he heated up his old wedding ring and turned it into a match stick like wand. Where he learned to hear the whispers without fear, where he schooled himself on how to harness gravity through thought.   Thought that  passed through the tiny gold wand pinched between thumb and forefinger.  A wand that bound gravity, as small as it was.

                 Halcyon days where he watched Mnem from the corner of his eye. Her utter beauty filled him as she watched him orbit rocks around himself as if he, Sean, was the Sun.  Birds would land around her, as if she were a Bird Queen. He would move the World for her so deeply did he feel he was in love.

                Even happiness has pests though, the girl Janet a chief one. Her boy George was a giggling dolt who listened carefully to what Janet said and then laughed at whatever Sean said. Now that he couldn't get drunk he felt he could make observations and be right.  Janet would watch him watch Mnem and  shake her head,  as if she were his mother and he was asking for a choc ice. She would often say:

                "You're a sorry guy Sean." He would wave her away, replying:

                "You don't know me, you don't know good and bad. You're sixteen!" She would never answer, except to shake her head in the choc ice way.

                Then one day the Old Man arrived. He just seemed to be there at breakfast. They all knew him in some way but it was if a spell had been cast and he was welcomed like an odd drunken uncle. He said, as they ate baked beans from a snagged shipping container :

                "What you have to do Sean, is be assertive. These powers you have been given,  assert them."

                "Meaning what?" Said Janet, who was the least under the old man's spell.

                "Meaning child.." there was a long pause, and all faces looked to floor except Janet who held the Old Man's eyes, "no fence sitting, no comic book hero's. Assert who you are, and fuck the rest." That quelled Janet, the Old Man had spoken truth and she couldn't deny fact for all her young strength.

                "A battle looms." The Old Man had announced. Sean remembered the moment,  sixty years gone. The Old Man stood and said. "Harness what you have been given, become apex, the battle decides the next fifty thousand years! It decides the next hominid species, after  you, after..." The Old Man trailed off, his curled silver hair seemed to cradle his face in sympathy and a tear fell, catching the morning sun in reflection.  He gathered himself.  "Has Ebba been here?" He looked at them in turn, lingering on Mnem, a strange yearning touching his face. He had shook his head and continued, "After the battle, should you survive, be kind to each other, don't let the battle linger, because really, only kindness matters."

                Sean remembered. The Old Man was something to him but it was hard to say what, was he one of the whisperers? No, he was a conveyer of the voices, just like the gold he held between thumb and finger.  Sean chose to forget the Old Man, they all did, even though his words had taken root in them all.

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                Sean remembered the start of the battle. The match stick wedding ring hummed with his thoughts, and he gathered around his body sands and pebbles, then rocks and boulders. Mnem had stood watching, his eyes were on her. She had her heel Tess the Labrador, he remembered that, then birds, always birds. He had gathered her up with gentle rock hands and placed her on his shoulder. Then strode through the Islands wall of Old World junk, taking wrecked trucks for his knees, cars for his elbows.  He pushed through the seas. He pushed to where the Old Man had said to go, was his name Perez, and, and? It was a blur.

                He remembered back, sixty years gone, awaking on his Island, just Sean, wishing he could have a drink.