7 search Party
I have something to tell you about where I’m going. What I’m hoping to find.
It’s autumn, out here. The warmth of the air is subverted by a breeze. It feels like relinquishment, like submission or the remittance of warmth briefly. But the weather here isn’t made for us. This weather is the beginning of that slow decay that leads us into winter. Even here, in the absence: The place all wanderers seem to end their days. We that seek out the elemental truths are fooled time and again by this trading of the seasons. But here the cusp lasts the longest, almost forever, and one can come to think that the warm will never be traded for cold; or life for death.
Elma and Eliza feel it too. They move, and react and therefore they have souls, which buzz and blink enthusiastically on the bumpy road away from the known.They feel something their makers must have felt: that life only exists as it does, because it has a counterpoint - an opposite…maybe death, maybe more than death.
I’ve come to walking a little ahead of them. It’s dangerous out here, even in the paucity of human life, other fiends exist. Demons in many guises; nature of course, which is hard and unrelenting; my own burdened soul. They will protect me because they have souls, because they know me and have been accommodated and attached
I can’t see the edge anymore.
The lights are gone. The bridge of opportunity that offers the meek a chance to return, to resign their efforts and give in, is gone. This could be that moment of independence - that breaking away from the childhood trampouline, the rainy backyard, the play one has with their siblings. Remembering those kids play in the yard is remembering every child who hung up his cowboy hat and boots, her fairy wings and tutu and grew up.
It feel like I’ve been walking for weeks, not hours.
Elma detects something in the distance, through the cold air, the rising blanket of sky-blue sand. She burs quietly, excitedly as I grasp my cane a little tighter.
I’m not safe tonight at this distance from town. The hotel’s candle is a distant memory. My jacket is the only warmth. I am alone - precisely where I needed to be.
A human howl cracks the night air, and although its echoes betray its distance from our search party it seems that we are not alone…
