Hauntingly Beautiful Girls

"Being Heard"

A breath of air in. The breath out feels urgent.

The next breath in. The breath out is managed and thoughtful.

There is an incredible, sweet and lovely scent in the air. Purple flowers of small petals.

Wrong. The scent is wrong. Everything is wrong. But the scent is certainly wrong.

Uniform and without variation as I breathe the scent in.

That is not natural. The air. The scent has no variation.

The air high above becomes crisp and lightly stingy to breathe in. Waves of upper air rolls downward in sheets. I should be able to sense that mixing as I breathe the scent in.

The soil is a place where air changes nature, the biology there becomes slow and stale. Wafts of that air, I should be able to sense it also mixing as I breathe the scent in.

What is happening?

Is this a death slumber fantasy?

It is oppressingly scary to not have a wider awareness. Death has ardent children in the wind, the ground, and especially the rain.

There are muted sounds. Present but far-off. Is my brain being managed by a dream guide?

My body is lightly rocking. Wrong. It moves unnaturally. The weight on joints is wrong. Lightness in ways that never exist. The hip joint has no weight to support.

The rocking of my legs, back, arms, and head. It is not at all like standing. My feet are the anchor point.

My body is vertical but wafts about like a thing only lightly drawn towards the earth.

That is an ancient mythical technology, artificial gravity. Something holds the balls of my feet, and my body floats lightly.

In the sway, I feel cloth against my flesh. That is not too wrong. I wear cloth. Yes. I wear it always.

Why? Most do not wear cloth, yet I do.

There is something wrong. The cloth brushes as I rock and sway. There is something else on my body. A cloth wraps my rump. That is wrong.

Also wrong, my legs are within cloth tubes.

The far-off sounds, there is something new. Light whispers "Baecrush".

Yes, that is who I am. I am Baecrush. One under protection, I wear cloth to mark my weakness.

No. No. I am the strongest crusher ever. Ever burdened to wear cloth because someone else wants my future.

Yet, my crushing sense is missing. It is unsettling to be somewhere and not have my 'crush'. Not to turn death's children into powder at nearly any distance.

When I open my eyes, the sounds are longer muted. Person and after person below where I am call my name.

My feet at fixed to a tall tower of solid rock. The people below call my name. Equal numbers of men and women wearing cloths of the ancient styles. That is wrong. Those beings, Homo Sapiens, are long gone. At time and place when men and women were nearly equal in numbers.

Now men are born only rarely.

The people below call out question after question.

As I answer something strange happens, the words appear in my thoughts briefly highlighted in [a manner] that lets me speak the words.

Question, then question, question after question, each from an earnest voice.

"How do you clear a field of the stinging death nettles?"

"How do you keep choking slime from forming in water pools?"

Answer after answer, I give and find the highlighted thoughts give words to those things I know.

When all the questions are asked, I become incredibly drained and tired.

Each of those people has gone off and I have no sense of where they are. Not in the smell of the air, not in "crush" sense. Away. Gone from here.

The smell of purple flowers grows and appears in waves. No longer uniform.

Of only the smell, I sense six coming near.

Six young women of the ancient race. Dressed in cloth much like me. Each a color different.

They draw near in a circle and do a very odd thing.

They question in a manner I do not know they [petition me] "Please Baecrush. May we care for you and tend to the weary state of you?"

I sigh without words, 'acceptance'.

A circular rift in the ground appears. The circle of girls and I move downward into the ground. My tower drops faster than the ground they stand on.

Soon, a clear dome covers the sky and we drop to a place and stop.

The young women move closer as the tower sinks. My feet become free.

They slide off the cloths I wear and replace them in larger and fluffier wrappings.

They encircle me in arms with their heads resting atop each other.

I start to ask questions, but I have spoken much more today than any dozen would have spoken in a lifetime.

The [girls] lay hands, tender and trembling, to warm my back, neck and head. I relax without more words and sleep.

There will be time for questions later.