Timelessness
#1 of Unfinished thoughts and random ideas
It's got to go somewhere, other than my head.
There was a constant sense of unease as I sat on the hard wooden board which served as my seat on the old weather beaten boat. My traveling companion was a single, well dressed coyote in his pressed white and black three piece suit. The fellow had touches of grey in his muzzle, but he moved without the burden of age, his soft voice still full of energy. Even as he lay back against the bow with his feet propped up on an empty seat, or what passed for one at any rate, he whistled a familiar tune I knew well, yet could not for the life of me recall the name of.
"How is this boat moving, exactly?" I asked with a mixture of curiosity and worry.
"Is it moving?" the well dressed man replied without looking up from his nails he was avidly picking at.
I looked around, realizing I simply had the impression we were moving. But beyond the constant fog and darkness surrounding us, I realized I couldn't actually tell which one of us was wrong.
"Where are we?" I tried a different tact, hoping to perhaps find an answer. An answer to what, I really didn't know.
"Right where we're meant to be" he replied without a sense of irony, which was starting to wear on my nerves.
"Why are we here?" I asked with a big of an edge to my words, suddenly leaning forward in my seat. Finally he looked up from his nails and met my gaze.
"That's between you and her" came his unexpected response, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Her who?" I pressed on, finally feeling like I was getting somewhere.
"You know who, this was your idea" the coyote replied with a look of confusion.
"I did?" I replied, just as equally confused.
"We're here" the well dressed coyote replied as something bumped against the side of our little boat. When I leaned over to look, I could just barely make out the outline of an old crumbling wooden dock. "Mind your step" he pressed on, as if ushering me from his boat before I could ask further questions.
I more than half expected to end up in the drink as I stood up in the boat, but to my surprise and also my relief, the boat barely rocked at all. Even as I stepped onto the crumbling dock, which groaned under my weight, they both stood firm beneath my feet, as if time held no power over them. "Mind your step and don't wander from the path" the coyotes voice called back as I watched his form melt into the thick fog. Once again the boat was moving under unseen power, without making a sound.
Standing at the edge of the dock surrounded by heavy fog, nothing else around was visible. It felt both claustrophobic and very open and vulnerable at the same time. I could barely see my feet on the dock below, let alone the shoreline or how far it might have been. Every step along the warped boards was accompanied by a groan or squeal of protest from the ancient wood and rusty nails alike. It was slow progress, stepping gingerly forward with one foot and testing the board to make sure it wouldn't crack beneath my weight before moving forward. After what felt like hours I finally felt solid ground beneath my feet, looking back the way I came, I briefly caught a glimpse of the short dock which I had just traversed before it was once again consumed by the swirling whiteness.
Turning to face the path ahead, I could see it too was overgrown with unkempt grass and weeds along a footpath. Once more I set out, stepping foot before foot and making my way inexorably forward. I made the mistake of looking to my left, just out of simple curiosity. As soon as my eyes met whatever was looking back at me, I wished I'd just kept staring down at the path.
A deep primal fear was triggered, an almost impossible desire to run in the opposite direction welled up within the very core of me. Something in the back of my mind told me to ignore it, those eyes of night were not alone out here, nor were they the worst thing lurking beyond the treeline. By some miracle I managed to swallow my fear and forced myself to look down at my feet again, fighting against the sudden hundred tonnes of weight now filling my shoes and forcing myself to take one gradual step after another. All the while I could feel eyes on me, my ears ringing with the silence of hungry bays of creatures that never made a sound, yet all called for me to run and step off the path.
By the time I entered the clearing, I was breathing hard. I felt as if I'd run a marathon, my heart beating against the inside of my chest and my lungs were starved of breath. But again, I instinctively knew I had not walked more than a couple hundred feet, if that. Time and space seemed irrelevant here, I was starting to understand that. I also had a suspicion "here" was a relative term as well, it didn't really feel like it was anywhere. At least not how we understand such things to be.
I stood in a clearing which the fog seemed either unable to, or unwilling to enter. The ground was covered in rich green grass, at least what bits of the ground were not covered by the thousands of roots from the large tree at the center of the open space. Following the gnarled and knotted trunk from the base upward, I found I was unable to see the top most branches. There were little glittering spots in the inky blackness above, but the fine hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, something within me knew they were not stars in the night sky. Instinctively I knew it should be bright as day right now, but again, time seemed to have no power here.
"You're beginning to understand" A sickly sweet voice called from somewhere up above.
"That I'm not where I was, but where I should be?" I replied without really thinking.
"Yes" the voice replied with a note of amusement. As I looked up at where I thought the voice was coming from, I spotted movement in the darkness above. Something was moving, almost falling down toward me. As it drew closer I could make out limbs and an abdomen, the thing looked like a giant spider. Thankfully I had kept spiders as pets growing up, so my first instinct was not to run, but to step back slowly out of its way to see what it wanted.
"You're not..." I stammered when the thing finally touched the ground, resting on its thick hairy eight legs. It was not a spider, at least not all of it. Where the spider's face should have been was instead the torso of a female wolf. Her long ivory white hair cascaded down over her shoulders, covering her seemingly bare bust and obscuring it from view. Her eyes were not what I had expected, they were neither insectoid or canine, instead they were a mix halfway. While her iris was a deep crimson flecked with gold, her pupil seemed to be constructed of dozens of tiny hexagonal pupils within.
"No, I'm not, but you knew that already, just as you know my name and who I am" the wolf spider spoke softly and began to pace slowly around me.
"Sha'lathinii...the source" I caught the barely perceptible curve at the corners of her lips, I was right. I didn't know how I knew her, I just did. I had never set foot in this place before, nor had I spoken to this large wolf spider lady, yet I felt as though I had countless times before.
"You came with questions, but you already know the answers" her soft and soothing voice mused.
"No, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't be here" I almost snapped back, causing the spider thing to pause mid-step.
"You do know, you just refuse to accept them" she replied back simply, though it was plainly evident she was trying to be courteous and not snap back.
"What if I don't want to accept them?" I pressed on, this time being more careful with my tone.
"Whether you accept them or not, you do not get to choose" finally she turned to stare back at me, this time with a look of almost sorrow in her odd partially insectoid eyes.
"So what, free will doesn't exist?" I growled at her, I couldn't help myself.
"You know the answer..." she started to reply, but I cut her off before she could finish.
"Just fucking tell me!" I shouted at her, causing her to flinch.
"No, it doesn't. The threads of fate are so vast and intricate, with near infinite junctures, that it creates a believable facade that it does. Everything you have done, everything you have thought and felt, it's all been part of a greater plan" Sha'lathinii finally turned to face me, addressing me directly for once.
"Whose greater plan? God? The Flying Spaghetti monster?" I couldn't stop myself from being angry.
"No, those are just things people too afraid to face their own mortality convince themselves exist, because they can't accept that when their thread comes to an end, so does their entire existence" she stated plainly.
"So what, are you saying life is meaningless, pointless? What's the point of doing anything then?" I asked, suddenly feeling all the anger drain from my body, only to be replaced by hopelessness.
"Just because you are not in control of the vehicle, it does not mean you can't or shouldn't enjoy the journey. Every life has a starting point and a destination, that is an immutable part of existing.