Aeolia

10: Realization

The sky was pale blue when they awoke. A wordless wind sighed through the thin, arching branches of the poplars.

     The woman looked over her shoulder and discovered that her wings had changed to a limpid silver. Where had these wings come from? The little bird must have seen them attached to her back, then told her to fly. It couldn't have made the wings appear.

     Then what had?

     She hoped she had a while longer with them, though. But as she watched the sun rise, and her wings began to dissolve.

     The wind rocked the crown of the poplar back and forth. The world remained silent, but it was transforming.

     Her wings faded to nothing, but still she didn't notice.

     The bird awoke and shuffled its feathers. Cocking a look at the woman, it took off into the sky. It dipped and swooped and tried to whistle, but nothing came out. The woman laughed silently and, without any forethought, leapt off of the branch to follow.

     Suddenly she was falling. Where had her wings gone? In a blind panic, she felt for them, but only touched bare shoulder blades. Her wings had torn part of her dress. She fell to the earth.

     But—no—! She never hit the ground.

     The wind caught her and twisted her up and away.

     Soon a vast sea appeared before her, a shining thing of the cheeriest blue. The warm sun shimmered upon its surface, and she was reminded of the fire that had consumed that forest. They had left it behind. They had left everything behind. And she was leaving the place of the poplars too, leaving her songbird.

     She began to sob, crying out to the wind that carried her to the lands of the furthest nowhere—lands of illusion and sparkling seas.

     "Stop, stop! Let me return! I need to find the land of amethyst and birdsong! I see it now—that I need to find Aeolia, my little bird and I!"

     The wind gasped and dropped her onto the frosted ground, all the illusions of happiness gone.

     An eternity later, the woman coughed and shook herself back to consciousness. She lay crumpled on the ground, the poplars rocking slowly above her, their latticed limbs frozen in embrace.

     What had happened? She'd never heard of a place called Aeolia. She knew the word "aeolian", which meant "of the wind", but that was all.

     She pressed her fingertips to her temples. The bird attempted to twitter to welcome her, but it remained mute.

     The woman groaned. She propped herself up on her elbows, eyeing the songbird. Its nimble feet were perched on a crumbling slat of stone, marked with ancient symbols. Curious. They were the symbols of her native language. The woman squinted.

     RUN OR WILT.

     The woman felt something snap within her. They knew of her weaknesses. Everything knew. How? The very air had inscribed it upon stone for her to read when she came to.

     What was this place? The land of anticipation? Why did they know she ran? Why did they know she hated it? Panicking, the woman glanced desperately around her. Every tombstone was marked with ominous words. All for her.

     DEAD ROSE IN A PORCELAIN VASE, one said.

     HOOKED LIP, read another.

     Something, or many things, began to laugh as the woman turned about in a frenzy, trying to find positive engravings.

     The poplars. The poplars were laughing.

     As she glanced around her, hair whipped in her face, and her eyes filled with tears of pain. The bird grew still and unseeing. The poplars' laughs were cruel and sharp, like splinters of ice.

     It seemed as if sound had broken through at last, just to torture the woman.

     Then the poplars began to hiss. They contorted in a shapeless wind.

"Sky is dark, air thin
Tangled breath and brick—
Wilting rose in a porcelain vase
Rivers running, a body sick."

     The woman beat her head against the ground. Dirt filled her mouth. She began to wilt like a rose in a porcelain vase.

     Every time she thought she was making progress, fear came back to kickstart the same vicious cycle. The fear carved tunnels of anxiety through her that she would no doubt crawl through again, when the worry struck, when the irrational thoughts took hold. She was stuck now. She would promise to change. And then, like always, she would not have the heart to do it. Her knees would buckle again, and again.

     It had been like this much longer than she liked to acknowledge.

     Now she was alone in a vast thought-space, where solid forms and colors had no bearing. Where loneliness ate away at the flesh. Where she would stay forever.

     The Viper was behind this, she knew. She tore at her hair. Her scalp stung.

     The poplars waved mournfully in the wind, all darkness gone.

     After a while, the woman fell asleep at the foot of a tombstone.

     She began to dream.