Mindscape

I stand there, on shifting anonymously familiar ground, the wind tearing at the ancient swaths of fabric draping from my shoulders and hips. Here, I am ageless, here I am drawn up into the stars of newly born thoughts and hurled back to an earth of principalities and practicalities.

My curls twist and tangle down my neck, past my shoulders to rest upon my back. There is something unsettling about it as if they were themselves alive and waiting to strike; to tickle or strangle who would know.

There are sounds upon the air, of wind humming through reeds and brushing over high grasses, moving over the waters as a lover. No birds sing here, they have fled this land in search of safer nesting grounds. The melody of lovers upon the sea and every touch felt me. The chorus held by the wind sings my mind away still farther from myself.

I am amid a sea of stars, bathing in the darkness of space between spaces, the split second blackness of between emotions. And they move as fireflies, those stars as if drawn to the scent of the oils upon this voided water. And I struggle to stay afloat, but I cannot move quickly enough for time has slowed, and I am pulled down from the blackness into a harsh white. I clasp a bit of darkness in sleepy hands as I fall.

The snow burns my lips, kisses the bareness it can reach from atop the ground. I pull the shroud around me, the skin of some great predator about me as if it could hunt out the cold, the jaws fitted atop my crown and along my jaw. The mouth of the beast is the only security in this place. I stumble blindly through the snow, not sure of what I'm searching for, knowing only that I must keep moving. Movement leads to survival, to be still is to acquiesce to that sleep ever beckoning from just beyond the corner of my eyes.

Slowly the snow ebbs after what feels like eons of traveling. Small patches of earth start peaking through, then small sproutlings of rebirth's hope look up at me with veiled faces. As I walk, they grow around me, sheltering the snow, reaching up into the clouds to hold them apart and let sunlight spill down upon me. I feel warm as if for the first time. It is like liquid beauty splashing down into my hands and I drink from that spring of life raining down upon me.

Life is returning. The wolf in whom I sheltered lifts himself from me, embracing me for a moment as if I were known to him before landing paws upon the ground. The great hunter before me with eyes like the shifting shadows upon the forest's floor; black and gold and ever-changing. He calls to his pack, a magnificent and gentle call before he fades back away from the light.

And I miss him. For he is the only other creature I have ever found here.