This is a story I will write when I feel like it.
I watched a town for years sitting on a hill to the west. In the morning the light would crawl from my eyes down to the houses, and at night my shadow ran down the hill, almost reaching the people and places. The nights and days were mild for years, a paradise of cool breezes, soft mists, and radiating warmth. I slept on a blanket and dined from the orchard. And I watched. I watched the new cars in the day and their lights shining bravely the way home as my shadow crept back towards me.
Every night I spent was in contrast to the world I would awake to. The still chill of the morning hoar wrapped across my arms had been broken by an eruption of screams and whistles. Which, over the years, slowly pierced the silence of my thoughts to allow in strange sights of machines and citadels wrapped in glass. But these were carried over from far away lands. My own idyllic glen would merely echo and pass back the world it had seen, but retained no interest in.
On rare occasion my body would follow my shadow into town; long after it had crept down the hill I would sneak after, finding it had permeated every nook and cranny of area unfilled with the dull yellow lights. Flickering, it sat in wait for the morning when it would crawl back to me, tired from its nocturnal adventures and ready to move with me again.
There was a young woman in this town that my shadow had taken a peculiar interest in. It was always he and never me that peeked about the corner in the late evening to see her pass. I saw her as he did: not with lines and distinction of color, but in form, long and graceful. Her shadow saw mine and waved as her caster walked beside the varied shops. She and her shadow moved in a rhythm of speed and spin, sliding through allies unseen by the streetlamps, and our shadows were lost together in the darkness.
When they separated mine held in the rusty edges of a gas street lamp, and hers in the nooks behind sills and furniture. The silhouette outlined, wavering from wick stained pink candles holding flame. I was somewhere walking with the light reaching my eyes but not my skin, hidden so my shadow could roam free as it longed and loved to do. My body left, and became lost among the walls and rooftops, roaming about chimneys and dancing in the space where moonlight hit upon the back of blades of grass.
I'm not sure when my shadow and I started traveling together. It seems as the wires slowly spread from house to house and the light became more steady. My shadow loved dancing against the soft edges of flames, turning air to heat and light, while beyond the moon's pale glow spread wide under swaying trees. With cars speeding between houses and lights losing their sway he chose to stay closer, sometimes our feet walking together but usually he was still steps ahead, sliding to a welcome recess and waiting for me to follow. I know I would need to keep close to him as well, people were starting to see me from the corner of their eyes while their shadows barely glanced.
Some realm I knew was leaving, and though I had been upon the same hill looking upon the town for lost years, the world I lived in shifted to some foreign one beneath my feet. I barely stood to sleep in the crook of a tree at noon with my shadow tucked into a knot, fearing every moment I stepped away from consciousness my home slipped further. I could not follow, and knew the town and woods would be a different indeed.
Sorrow is not the right word to describe what I felt. A rending. A slow tearing of what I knew from what I remembered. And there is no pain, no mark, no memory at all to describe what I was aside from a gap I'm quite sure is there. What a strange sensation. What a wonderful thing to be reborn.
It seems they notice me. From periphery and the tingling of their neck hairs. Their shadows noticing mine on his way through town ahead of me. Their shadows noticing me.
What odd and beautiful things I know. The truth of the world presented in every fallen leaf I trod. My step, no matter how light, crushing it back into the ground which birthed it. The knowledge of the world in the stir of every cool breeze, the crawling shadows of the trees dancing with my own. Slipping under the roots at a noon, long and slender and beautiful upon the dusk, stretching so far the imagination forgets how wonderful and true, dancing again as the month as the moon reflects a pale dawn unto the midnight world. As the people slept in the town below I knew this. Every night my shadow sliding tween the infinite blades of grass on my way to the town's center. And the people. How, even in sleep, could they be so unaware?
I step into the sides of their vision, so rich but blurry, seen but barely perceived. Perhaps I live in these people's unaware. My world looks and acts so similar, yet my physical presence, and even effect I have on the world, is so light even if I were to scream in someone's face they would barely bat an eye. Not that I ever have. Yelled. Or been in someone's face. Or close enough to touch someone. What would happen if I tried?
Can I... touch myself? My own form seems to flow like heated vapors, shifting and cracking through the air. Do I move through my own form, or am I connected like the upheaving mists from waterfalls. Never had I thought upon such things; but even in the deepest woods heavy boots have broken ground. This feeling is quite unpleasant, not for the physical shift, but for the fact that things are changing. Quickly. And beyond a control I've ever desired.
If I can truly be seen by this new world, do I even exist? Perhaps I will change. Or the juxtaposition between how I have been and how I will be shall spell my end. On to some new adventure beyond what imagination and dreams dared drag into my subconscious. For now I shall lie atop a tree, allowing my shadow to wrap around it's trunk and under well known branches, swaying gentle with the unchanged wind. And together we shall rest, above the fray of worry, unworried by the new world shifting upon our own.
Every night I spent was in contrast to the world I would awake to. The still chill of the morning hoar wrapped across my arms had been broken by an eruption of screams and whistles. Which, over the years, slowly pierced the silence of my thoughts to allow in strange sights of machines and citadels wrapped in glass. But these were carried over from far away lands. My own idyllic glen would merely echo and pass back the world it had seen, but retained no interest in.
On rare occasion my body would follow my shadow into town; long after it had crept down the hill I would sneak after, finding it had permeated every nook and cranny of area unfilled with the dull yellow lights. Flickering, it sat in wait for the morning when it would crawl back to me, tired from its nocturnal adventures and ready to move with me again.
There was a young woman in this town that my shadow had taken a peculiar interest in. It was always he and never me that peeked about the corner in the late evening to see her pass. I saw her as he did: not with lines and distinction of color, but in form, long and graceful. Her shadow saw mine and waved as her caster walked beside the varied shops. She and her shadow moved in a rhythm of speed and spin, sliding through allies unseen by the streetlamps, and our shadows were lost together in the darkness.
When they separated mine held in the rusty edges of a gas street lamp, and hers in the nooks behind sills and furniture. The silhouette outlined, wavering from wick stained pink candles holding flame. I was somewhere walking with the light reaching my eyes but not my skin, hidden so my shadow could roam free as it longed and loved to do. My body left, and became lost among the walls and rooftops, roaming about chimneys and dancing in the space where moonlight hit upon the back of blades of grass.
I'm not sure when my shadow and I started traveling together. It seems as the wires slowly spread from house to house and the light became more steady. My shadow loved dancing against the soft edges of flames, turning air to heat and light, while beyond the moon's pale glow spread wide under swaying trees. With cars speeding between houses and lights losing their sway he chose to stay closer, sometimes our feet walking together but usually he was still steps ahead, sliding to a welcome recess and waiting for me to follow. I know I would need to keep close to him as well, people were starting to see me from the corner of their eyes while their shadows barely glanced.
Some realm I knew was leaving, and though I had been upon the same hill looking upon the town for lost years, the world I lived in shifted to some foreign one beneath my feet. I barely stood to sleep in the crook of a tree at noon with my shadow tucked into a knot, fearing every moment I stepped away from consciousness my home slipped further. I could not follow, and knew the town and woods would be a different indeed.
Sorrow is not the right word to describe what I felt. A rending. A slow tearing of what I knew from what I remembered. And there is no pain, no mark, no memory at all to describe what I was aside from a gap I'm quite sure is there. What a strange sensation. What a wonderful thing to be reborn.
It seems they notice me. From periphery and the tingling of their neck hairs. Their shadows noticing mine on his way through town ahead of me. Their shadows noticing me.
What odd and beautiful things I know. The truth of the world presented in every fallen leaf I trod. My step, no matter how light, crushing it back into the ground which birthed it. The knowledge of the world in the stir of every cool breeze, the crawling shadows of the trees dancing with my own. Slipping under the roots at a noon, long and slender and beautiful upon the dusk, stretching so far the imagination forgets how wonderful and true, dancing again as the month as the moon reflects a pale dawn unto the midnight world. As the people slept in the town below I knew this. Every night my shadow sliding tween the infinite blades of grass on my way to the town's center. And the people. How, even in sleep, could they be so unaware?
I step into the sides of their vision, so rich but blurry, seen but barely perceived. Perhaps I live in these people's unaware. My world looks and acts so similar, yet my physical presence, and even effect I have on the world, is so light even if I were to scream in someone's face they would barely bat an eye. Not that I ever have. Yelled. Or been in someone's face. Or close enough to touch someone. What would happen if I tried?
Can I... touch myself? My own form seems to flow like heated vapors, shifting and cracking through the air. Do I move through my own form, or am I connected like the upheaving mists from waterfalls. Never had I thought upon such things; but even in the deepest woods heavy boots have broken ground. This feeling is quite unpleasant, not for the physical shift, but for the fact that things are changing. Quickly. And beyond a control I've ever desired.
If I can truly be seen by this new world, do I even exist? Perhaps I will change. Or the juxtaposition between how I have been and how I will be shall spell my end. On to some new adventure beyond what imagination and dreams dared drag into my subconscious. For now I shall lie atop a tree, allowing my shadow to wrap around it's trunk and under well known branches, swaying gentle with the unchanged wind. And together we shall rest, above the fray of worry, unworried by the new world shifting upon our own.
