Green Neon

34 Sir Edmund Hillary and sheep over Delphi

"It's not working on me."

Was that his own voice that had croaked those words, Tom wondered. The midday heat had suddenly dried his mouth.

"I can hear that, Gangster," Nikos stated wryly.

Tom considered his friend's answer. "Listen, hmm." His inner voice, the one he heard in his head, sounded different than the voice he had just used when he was talking to Nikos. "Why do I have two different voices?" he wondered, "and how did Nikos notice it before I did? Why can Nikos hear my inner voice?" An interesting question, he decided.

"Why can you hear my voice?" he asked his friend, and although he felt that he hadn't phrased the question correctly, Tom thought that Nikos would certainly understand him, and didn't therefore correct himself.

The white sheep in the sky didn't appear to be moving?

Nikos seemed to have difficulties understanding his question, because he only answered after a long period of reflection, and then with a counter-question.

"Why shouldn't I hear it?"

Aha, so he should have worded it differently. Maybe he should have informed Nikos that he meant his inner voice, the one in his head. After an extremely brief pause for thought, Tom explained:

"I mean the voice in my head, of course, not my speaking voice."

That was worded in a somewhat strange way again, that was clear to him, but this time Nikos understood him immediately. His voice was a little deeper than usual, also rougher:

"Of course, the voice in your head. Why can I hear it? Because I'm stoned and because you're stoned."

The sheep moved a little bit to the left, all at once. They probably grazed the first spot, Tom concluded.

Stoned?

"I'm not stoned." Tom chuckled at the absurd idea. Then he explained the matter of the two voices to Nikos again. The explanation was growing long, but Nikos read his mind and provided the reason why such a simple fact that everybody had have voices in their heads was sometimes so difficult to explain:

"Because you're totally stoned. Like me. We're both equally stoned. That's why we can hear each other's thoughts. Those are the second voices. It's easy, isn't it?"

Tom considered. The sheep were still grazing in the new spot.

"Nice job, being a sheep in the sky all day." Had he said that aloud? He giggled again. Nikos rolled onto his side, grinning broadly. Tom followed his example so they could now look at each other. He found himself grinning too. Nikos was the expert, and Nikos said he was stoned.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tom caught the sheep move a little further away. One of them looked at him briefly and smiled. The voice of the beast was in his brain:

"Tom, you're high."

"Nikos, I'm high."

"That's what I'm saying."

Nikos was grinning from ear to ear. He took off his sunglasses and Tom noticed that his friend's eyes were red and framed by thick, swollen lids. Nikos had turned Chinese, eye shape included.

"Nikos, the Chinese," laughed Tom. They laughed uncontrollably, and when the fit was almost over, Tom took off his sunglasses to wipe the tears from his eyes. Immediately, Nikos laughed out loud, which in turn infected Tom.

"Tom, the Japanese," Nikos gasped between fits of laughter, prompting another fit.

The landscape seemed to change at this time of day, Tom noticed. The valley was deeper, the slopes steeper. He wondered with trepidation how they would later manage the dangerous descent without accident. Though the sea was still far away, it sent flashes of reflected sunlight up from the gorge's exit and into the theater. Despite the distance, Tom could smell the seawater, and every now and then there was a faint sound of waves crashing. The pillars of a temple shone bright white. A quick look at the sheep confirmed that it wouldn't take a dog to stop them from running away.