Struggle and Strive

STRUGGLE&STRIVE: Flashing Nomad

Breathe.  Just breathe.  Slow, simple breaths.  They will sustain me for now.

            With my breathing controlled, the bubble around me stops closing in.  The steady exhalations cause the bubble to start to expand, and now I’m floating.

            Panic.  What’s happening?  Where am I going?  How do I get down?

            I place my fingertips on the sides of the bubble.  It was not soapy as I had assumed, but soft, warm and pulsing.  Now I could feel it reverberating through me as I touched it, like the heartbeat of a kitten curled on my chest.

            Warmth.  I feel it spreading through me.  Like a blanket.  Covering me.

            Perhaps it is my now closer proximity to the sun, perhaps it is the heat of the adrenaline in my cheeks, or maybe it is this bubble, carrying me above the world.

            Beautiful.  The meadows and forests beneath me.  Rivers and mountains.

            They are beckoning me, begging me to explore them.  To find them out and to see inside.  I reach out to touch them, and the bubble tugs me the other direction.  I run towards these fields of waves, these oceans of gold.  The sun is shining.

            Farther.  Drifting farther away.  Reaching.  Hot tears running down stone cold cheeks.

            I am above the clouds now, no longer gazing up at their bellies, but facing their dark sides, flatter than I had imagined.  Harder, too.  If I feel onto one, would I bounce or splat?  Even the tallest mountains are hidden beneath.

            Gone. 

Are the puffy, fluffy whites. Are the green and gold and blue.  Is the shining sun.

All is dark and my bubble’s gone cold, sending shivers through the roots of my hair.

Am I alone?  Where is the earth?  The clouds?  Am I still in the sky?

Flash.  Of lightening.  Flash.  Of fear.  I’m clinging to the walls now gone slippery.

Eyes open or closed, there is no difference.  Except for that behind my lids I can see bright lilies, smiles on faces, glittering waters.

Flash.

A shrieking fills my throat and all memories of light disappear.  There I am, just outside the bubble.  I am pale and wispy and empty.  Transparent.

Flash.

My image is gone.  Was that a reflection?  A dream? A vision?

WHERE AM I?

I am falling.

The bubble dissolves into suds around me.  It’s like falling through the floor.

Where are the bouncy-castle-esque clouds from my childhood?  They are no longer drifting above my head, but looming below me.  I can feel them sucking the heat in my blood away from me as I approach.

But instead of the splat that was expected, I was only a CRASH and another mundane

flash.