Epilogue: silverprints
Copyright© 2019 by Ryan Sylander
side 0: jiǎn
May 5, 2075
I knew I should have been ready.
But it had only been seventeen years, not thirty-three and a bit, like perhaps one might’ve expected. Then again, I used to have a certain saying about expectations, long ago. I’d forgotten it by now, but I remember that it was not a particularly kind description of them.
So no, I wasn’t ready, and therefore I got caught out between the house and the cabin when the final knot in my mind started untangling itself. Now as I lay there in the yard, prone, I could smell the rich earth as my face remained pressed against it, a slave to gravity. The summer sun had warmed the elements and life grew all around me even as I felt it do so, unfazed by my intrusion.
I pulled myself forward a little, finding that I had some strength remaining after all, however minimal.
Maybe I can still get there ... But does it even matter?
I stared at the house, jutting sideways out of the vertical wall that was the turned world. Maybe I could—
Oh, let Alana and Shannon drink their tea in peace, fool, and go about your business... !
And perhaps they were even out and about, or working in the gardens ... It can be hard to remember these things when you’re nearly a century old and possessed of an unraveling mind.
No, they’ll know well enough. Let them enjoy their morning...
I pulled myself forward again, half crawling, half sliding. I kept my eyes closed, since they were useless now; I could not look ahead of me. Slowly I moved toward the forest and into it. Along the way I caressed trees that I’d known as acorns, encountered stones that had supported my feet as a wee lad.
The ground grew steeper and made me slow even more, but no matter: I had all the time I needed.
The world is paused, after all...
A welcome sound tickled my ears as the slope increased further. I grasped at dirt and sticks and leaves and rocks as I approached the singing rill. Water began spilling around me, over me, all of it in ecstatic greeting as I entered the stream bed, a path unmoved in the past hundred years, despite everything.
The last rise...
I could hear the calmness above me.
Just a little further...
I could touch it now, splash my hand through the warm surface. The pool beckoned, but my strength was, finally, nearing an end.
The edges become dark. The focus grows soft. The finger is poised...
In truth, it made no difference, strength or no strength. I was where I was, and it was both good, and good enough. I really could have remained on the grass where I’d first fallen. The outcome would have been the same, regardless. Well, eventually, I supposed, but ‘eventually’ had no meaning now.
Still, ever the fool, I imagined that I had somewhere better to be, so even at the end of everything: I failed. With the very last surge of energy I’d ever possess, I got to my knees and leapt forward. I cleared the rocky dam, splash-landing into the swirling pool, enveloped by her energetic warm waters.
That was it; I could do no more, not even roll over onto my back.
So I floated there, face down, the currents turning me idly like a fallen leaf. The little cascade sang to me, of streamlets and a perfect glen, of heather-clad mountains, and of sweet things that never ended.
Little by little, all the air bubbles escaped my lungs, my mouth ... They rose to the surface to meet their brethren, free at last, their duty to me finished as far as I’d ever be concerned.
I opened my eyes, looking into the depths of our beloved little pool. I could see only the faint echo of daylight, shimmering in the edges of my vision. But even that stimulus faded away ... Blackness set in.
The currents spin ... The waterfall sings and teases...
The finger twitches...
Breathe...
The shutter releases...
My body continues to swirl, caressed, washed clear of the last of ten-thousand things. The trees look on, impassive, yet occasionally betraying their feelings by dropping springtide leaves into the water in solidarity. The hum of the glen continues, unfazed. Only the sound of a raven’s call echoing from the fell interrupts the constant and dynamic vibration of the forest.
With loving guidance from two daughters of pure light, the body transforms into ash and dust ... The waters reach out and begin pulling the cloud of what remains toward the head of the stream, siphoning the matter’s edge into fast moving waters, stretching it out into a lengthening line.
With increasing speed the brook continues the same labor of the last million years: that of bringing the mountain to the sea.
Today is no different, though. Nothing special. Tomorrow it will be more leaves and twigs, more ash and dust.
But at this moment, the particles that at one time I was privileged to borrow ... They continue to flow, making a great charge through the valleys, joining with ever larger waters, becoming ever more disintegrated with each other, as even now some yet remain in the pool, swirling, dancing, ready for their journey...
The first molecules reach the sea, meeting the roaring and saline life therein. It’s a raucous greeting, turbulent through brackish waters until waves begin to play with the remnants, tossing them about with vital and unabashed joy. The sea moves it all onward, though, for she is vast, and more is still coming down the river. She welcomes all of it, blending it with what already existed, what she already held in her, collected from sand patterns at the edges ... Ashes and leaves, yes, but also wishes and hopes that were sent down the waterway long ago, which she accepted ecstatically and unconditionally despite knowing the folly of such ephemeral things.
The remains continue to spread out, escaping the clutches of land, floating out in wilder waters, ever wider, ever more mixed together...
Disintegration becomes integration once again...
The circle reformed, and married to the line...
And so, this is how it ends: The mountains fall into the embrace of the sea, as it should be, and as they must ... And while the sea remains eternal, so shall the mountains, even if turned to dust.
But no...
There’s no end...
And there never was...
Indeed, there never can be:
A focus forms near the tip of a point of land.
It is an oddity, for particles in water should spread evenly ... The great equalizer of random movement should be preventing the little coalescence that is forming there, just now. But it is forming nonetheless.
And who am I to say that the rules don’t change? For everything always changes, even if imperceptibly.
The focusing vortex siphons me into it...
... and I find myself in a place, holding an implement of some kind. The mist is thick and yet dissolving quickly by sun, for such is the nature of daylight.
The sediment is precipitating out of the waters now; I recognize the implement in my hand, and indeed the place where I am.
I find such odd feelings within me. Strength of body, and of youth ... My skin is smooth, my muscles no longer tired. And this mind is foreign too, deeply knotted and unclear, and full of things not felt for so long: anxiety, hollowness, despair ... but also excitement, vigor, and hope.
As I adjust to this reinfusion of forgotten things, there is a sudden crack and a separation...
... and I find the world getting smaller, ever so slowly. I notice someone standing beside me, reaching abruptly for the railing, perhaps reacting to the shock of whatever just occurred. Then I realize it’s me that I see, grabbing hold of that length of old and weathered wood.
And getting smaller...
Is it me?
I chide myself, ever the fool. No! Let the kid be himself!
Yes ... Better...
I hear the quiet melody of footsteps on old boards.
A fragment of a million tunes...
I recognize the song, but the kid doesn’t. Therefore only I look, and find a girl walking there, with her own implement in hand, wearing a life-affirming smile.
I feel like I’ve seen her before, but I know it can’t be. Then again, I remember those eyes ... Or maybe it’s just the sea that I see so familiarly in there.
As I look into the deepest blue therein, I realize that she’s going to end up heading right for that kid. A collision, to form a new boundary ... He’s about to encounter an eternal mystery, to be tricked into clinging to the disintegrating edges of an endless series of bright new shorelines. The ceaseless sea will overwhelm him and the great net will ensnare him, unendingly.
He’ll never know what she’ll do next...
The sediment settles just a little more, the waters becoming crystal clear now.
A little lens of perfection forms...
And in looking through it, I see that just this once, I know!
I know what this girl is about to say to him!
Two little words...
I call out to him, since there’s plenty of time to warn him; she’s not even halfway down the length yet.
I call out, ‘Hello there!’
There’s time ... there’s always time...
‘Hello?’
She’s going to drop those two little words into him, and cause a sea change in his life. He needs to know!
I pause the world...
I pause the world!
And it pauses...
But ... The nameless girl ... She keeps walking, happily, completely and impossibly unaffected.
The scene grows smaller...
I call out again ... Call out, to tell him that all those things that I’d just felt within him, the anxious excitement, the hollow vigor, the hopeful despair, everything ... they aren’t necessary at all! If he can just let them all go, grab onto that arriving tide with everything he has, and dive into the mystery ... Swim within the net, get caught in it ... And then let it all go, only to do it again ... and again...
It will be so much happier for him...
I call out...
But he can’t hear me. I am too far.
And I never was close enough to begin with...
I watch. The pier girl nears, inevitably: the onrush of a tidal wave.
Two life-bending words...
To end everything...
And to begin everything anew.
The world shrinks ever more.
He’s going to have to figure it out by himself.
I can’t help him after all...
The water swirls unexpectedly, and just before the scene blinks out into oblivion, I see ... something else.
Something that I hadn’t seen earlier.
And I realize that maybe ... he won’t have to figure it out by himself, after all.
And that thought...
It gives me happiness for the rest of eternity.