The Second Day of Tepmas: What We Leave Behind
Warning: Bummer
Many look for a way to escape. We slip into worlds we make, limited by only our imagination, and our singular nature. The greatest, simplest thing is someone we care for. But to care requires us to leave the worlds we make.
Remember what we leave when we make our dreams.
Transformation is a fetish of escapism at its core, but as much as escapism can lift someone's spirits, escapism can easily foster apathy toward reality.
He steps into a sea of footprints, each his own. He has been this way
before. There are twenty-three trees he can see from where he
stands. Everything else sinks into the rising ground, the thick
whiteness that stretches from his feet to the sky above him. Only the
trees stand out, volcanic against the soft haze.
The snow drapes in front of him, trailing through the air with each
step. There is no end to the clouds above, and they will keep
snowing. The ground is smoothed by snow and features are dimmed by the
cold. Direction vanishes without the sky, and time fades to the subtle
changes of light. It is a homeless world, without comfort, without the
faces of the ones he loves.
Capped by snow, sliding into the white field that stretches out,
mushrooms grow from the base of one of the twenty-three trees. He waits
each moment inside his stomach. He cannot eat the unknown fruit of an
unknown tree yet. He is not hungry enough.
The first aid kit is impossible. It has no reason to be here, in the
woods, uncovered by snow. He drops to his knees and his skin aches, but
he does not listen. With numb fingers, he pushes open the aluminum
lid.
There is nothing inside.
A flare of snow trails off the tip of his foot. The box lands, sitting
in the snow just as he left it. While he breathes his heat into the
air, he draws a line between the two points he can now see. The clouds
of his mind break for a moment. A map begins with a single line.
He follows the trail of his feet back. They are dusted with snow, but
they are the freshest of all the footsteps that run though here. Ahead,
his feet stop and pace around a focal point. The mushrooms are there.
...The mushrooms were there. He knew they were there. It's the right
tree. It's the right place. He digs his hands into the snow. The melt
on his fingers burns his bones but he digs down to dirt. There are no
mushrooms.
There is no kit.
There are twenty-three trees he can see from where he stands. He steps
into a sea of footprints, each his own. He has been this way before.
Each minute stretches with the effort of driving his feet through the
snow. Each step becomes a minute. The first aid kit sits just as he
left it, three feet to the right of where he walks. He passes it
twice. The third time, he picks it up. The heat of insanity presses
against the cold seeping in against his dry skin. He must be walking in
circles.
The first aid kit sits just as he left it, three feet to the right of
where he stands. The first aid kit sits also in his hands. The two of
them occupy his vision together, and the world does not come crashing
down.
One kit collides with another. They are both real. He lifts his eyes
and squints. Out of the haze, he can make out the red on white crosses
like a field in front of him. He screams into the falling snow and it
ices the breath from his lips. Frustration strains against his skin and
he starts to run.
He steps into a sea of footprints, each his own. He has been this way
before. But they will no longer be his. He is clever now. He tugs at
strings. His boots fall to the ground. His coat warms a tree
branch. He wades through a forest of snow and sleeping trees and
aluminum boxes offering him hollow help.
He wants to stroke a shoulder, to lean his head against a pillow that
knows his shape, to walk through halls whose distance he knows by
pace. In his mind, he holds the faces whose definition escape his
words. They are abstract; love and concern, anxious and impatient. He
cannot see them now, and he may never see them again.
His discarded clothes join the taunt. A tree wears his coat
low-slung. His boots sit by his footprints, invitingly open. Again and
again, they demand he fight.
The mushrooms come again. He knows their shape more clearly than
anything now. In bare toes, damp and pink and numb to the heels but
burning on the inside, he crouches.
The unknown fruit of an unknown tree is soft. Ice crystals inside it
crunch under his teeth. It is an oaky paste when he swallows it. Then
comes pain. A beast roars against his gut. The snow sears along his
side, but his legs cannot hold him up. Seaweed trees ripple in the
waves that wash through the air.
His fingers curl, not chilled but tense. He claws at the snow, too numb
to move his fingers. The joints puff, the flesh swells and aches and
pulls in against itself. He digs a naked paw into the snow.
The sky is radiant and the snow electric. His paws rake his chest but
the pain is no more than a prick and now he is free from his shirt. His
lungs tighten and the air shrivels inside them, but then he breathes
deep through a thick, rounded chest.
His tongue darts over his lips as an iron tinge meets his taste. Each
lap chills his tongue, spreading ice atop the searing furnace of his
body. Longer and flatter it hangs, dangling from his lips, letting each
hot breath spill into the cold world.
His spine twists as he moves to stand. His front legs will not leave
the snow. His hands no longer burn; they are paws, and the snow is
their home. Behind him tendons gather to welcome a new tail.
The heat turns his mind opaque. He wants to relieve the burning.
He steps into a sea of footprints, each another's, the wanderings of the
one who had come here before him. He lifts his chin to the sky and
throws aside all thought. Instinct comes without thought or
conscience. A great relief falls on him.
The concepts he once knew, the ideas of love and concern and Wife and Child, are gone. He does not know they are gone.
But they know that he will never come back. Buried, cold and white
beneath the snow, he howls his pleasure in a dead dream.