2018 Writing Scrapbook

Entwined

The fish lived in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the waves. These tunnels were the polished stones and pebbles underlying the waters up above. It darted to and fro, never ceasing, never taking a break, even when exhaustion overwhelmed it. It simply continued down the river, the current pulling at its fins.

The fish did not remember birth nor death, life nor afterlife, but it knew of it. It knew that its current form was never its first nor its last, and the the river stayed the same. Even more clearly than knowing of this cycle it floated through, it knew of the loss it suffered.

It could envision in its mind the key, bronze and copper like its own scales that kept it from this force. This is what drove it on. It was this determination to find the missing piece.

The bird soared in the heavens, and it could feel a presence of a river beneath it, but something always tugged at its feathers and pulled its chin back up whenever it tried to look down. It was blue as the sky, it knew, with a long silky tail made of satin. The bird imagined that its tail was a cluster of ribbons fluttering, its eyes orbs of glass.

Night after night it soared peacefully above the clouds. It swooped and twirled, gliding on the turbulence of the wind.

Sometimes the bird wondered whether it should be grateful to live like this, in a dreamlike state, never having to stop to eat of rest, never having to stop to socialize. It was able to look onwards across the horizon.

The bird was able to see the stars twinkling every night like tiny fireflies. It took joy in this small feat, but what came after it made the bird stop and float with a confused longing. It was a constant reminder that some asset of its life was gone- the sunset.

Something about the orange colored pigments of light made time move slowly, made the bird rack its brain, trying to remember what it was missing.

The fish never saw any other creatures under the water, nor did it see the sky up above. It was sure that both existed, but never had it seen either.

Days, years even, they passed, a cycle of night and day, repeating endlessly. Every once in awhile, it caught sight of an object flickering in the water, and flashes of memories returned.

It was something small most of the time, like a hint of green moss, or a feather, drifted from the forbidden sky. They gave it visions that it wasn't entirely sure what to do with. In these visions, it saw itself above the water in different landscapes. There were mountains, auroras, thundering volcanoes with raging steam pouring out. But more than these places gave it happiness, it was the weightless feeling and the knowledge that it was with another.

The bird eventually deciphered one day just how many lifetimes it had passed through. It took every collection of memories that it had stored in its brain and pieced them together like a puzzle. It consisted of nine places, nine havens, nine oasis.

A cave, with pillars of blue. A city, with a sparkling golden ferris wheel. Icy cliffs to the north, with an aurora shining over them. After that came golden canyons, followed by a volcano blowing ash, and then a still lake with ethereal flowers growing on the shores.

The last two consisted of an ice palace made in the mountains, and finally a windswept plain up in the summits of those same mountains. It remembered the sensation of flying, dipping down into the waters, and then reaching back up again, but as it continued on, searching for more clues, it still couldn't place what exactly it was, or how it got there.

Certainly each one of these lives constituted great importance in this ongoing journey, and yet each time it started over, it had this awkward feeling of having been yanked away from its true destiny.