An ancient must hung heavy in the air, a mist of particles drawn from the mold and mildew of thick vegetation and rich dirt, raising and lowering like the breathing of the world itself. It spoke of untold ages, ages passed and ages yet to be, as though the whole world stood suspended in the middle of eternity. Great trees stood here, thick and tall, innumerable in number, yet not pressed tightly together. Each held its own dominion, only touching its neighbors at the top of the canopy where their thin whip-like tendrils billowed into one another. The vines would entangle, then slowly unwind, and where they drew apart a fertilized seed fell. The seeds came floating down gently, sprouting and leafing even as they were suspended in the air. Most of them shriveled and decayed in the midst of this process, breaking into dried pieces of detritus to join the particle cloud, victims of some deficiency in their nature. About one in ten of the saplings actually made it to the ground, where they instantly sprung roots out, burrowing through the thick carpet of leaves in search of the rich soil. Of these another majority would shrivel and die before their tender roots could find purchase. A portion though, a tenth of a tenth, found the soil and from that deep earth drew energy to produce a single white flower, broad and open.
Through the entire setting was a soft golden light. That light did not seem to emanate from a single point, nor even a single direction. Instead it was so diffused and diffracted by the atmosphere that its origin, if indeed there was one, was impossible to tell. Under such a body of illumination the shadows were made so vague and overlapping that they could hardly be noticed at all.
Into this grand endlessness there came, almost imperceptibly, the occasional wisping breeze winding between the trees, heralding from peaks and valleys unknown. One of these slight currents struck against one of the trunks and dissipated into nothingness, puffing away the light detritus that had accumulated on the bark, and exposing a stark white patch beneath. The fresh bark seemed to wince at the sight of naked light, and shriveled itself into tight folds, pulling from nearby layers of moss to cover itself. As it shriveled it exuded moisture, and the heavy drops of sappy water rolled as a stream down the trunk and into the crook of a branch. There they pooled over some bumpy thing that lay there, washing away millennia of grime and dust. Two closed eyelids were revealed, brown and formed of some tough, brittle skin. The drops absorbed into that rough skin, traces of it streaming down the sides like tears. As beads of the thick water sunk between the lids a pair of underlying eyes twitched ever so slightly.
A moss-covered mound a few inches away raised and lowered as an uneven shuddering breath disturbed the tranquil silence. A long pause followed, and then another breath, this one more steady and full. Soon the creature’s chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. As one breath passed, and then another, the grip of hibernation relaxed on the creature and with each exhale the eyelids receded a few more millimeters apart. The glassy pupils being unveiled were unfocused and vacant, unseeing though open. At their cores was a tiny spark of awareness, though, and it began to expand until suddenly the creature blinked, and then eyes reopened with a full consciousness. They did not dart about, but the pupils did contract, focusing up on the tree swaying up above. The tree did not sway in any wind, rather it was merely redistributing its considerable weight from one root to another in a long, slow rocking motion, like a careful mother trying to lull her child back to sleep.
With the advent of consciousness there now followed the awareness of physical sensations as well, and the creature became numbly cognizant of a pressure on its chest, the build-up of moss grown across its body. It tried to lift its limbs but they did not respond, and so it lay there and waited as waves of prickling sensations passed from each nerve returning to life. It became aware of its other senses, too, and it took a deep breath to inhale the scents of stillness and entropy. A mandible moistened and it tasted the sugar in the sap that had washed its face. The creature tried to move its arms again, which was met by the resisting strain of the moss’s tendrils. The creature maintained a constant pressure against them, though, and one by one their roots snapped in quickening succession. The creature threw its thorax against the blanket of lichen and the resistance broke entirely as its back glided to an upright position. Insect-like arms with thin-fingered hands emerged, and slowly, almost reverentially, began pulling the growth away from itself, revealing its copper exoskeleton. The hands then set to work uncovering the legs, and once enough of the foliage was broken off the creature pressed its palms against the body of the branch and stood upwards, each of its four legs trembling from the strain of the vines wrapped around the waist, but again it pushed on until the cords snapped with a loud crack. As the creature reached a full upright posture its back instinctively opened and a dual pair of clear wings unfolded against the light, drying from their ages of condensation.
The creature’s mind was blank, but not new; it had not been born, only awakened. Awakened after a period so long that all rememberances had been permanently released. There only remained the shadow of a memory, one stored not in the mind but etched into the very body, a sort of aching nostalgia, a call that could never be answered. The creature had no name for the trees, the air, the ground, and it did not understand their inner workings; but its instincts made it comfortable with them all the same. It could process and accept them as separate entities from one another, and also recognize itself as a separate entity as well. The creature began to associate its sensations with those various different entities: the sense of movement belonged to the swaying branch it stood upon, the smell of pollen belonged to the cloud of particles that shimmered all around, the sound of rustling belonged to the leaves above.
The creature stood in silent observation until its wings were dry, and it beat them in curiosity, the feet lifting off the branch and hovering in space for a moment. The effort was difficult for muscles so long out of practice, and looking downwards the being allowed itself to slowly drop towards the forest floor. The air was so thick of particles that the wings did not have to work hard to resist it, only requiring a lazy stroke now and again to maintain a safe descent speed. The feet touched the dried remains of dead leaves which were so frail that they disintegrated into a cloud of powder on contact, exposing the bare earth, dark and muddy beneath. The color of the soil was such a dark brown that it was almost black, with veins of orange and flecks of tan sprinkled across. The whole thing was spongy and the individual granules clung to one another due to being so saturated with moisture.
As a force of instinct, the creature cupped the dirt in its hands and pulled it up towards the face. It inhaled, and was struck by a symphony of scents, evidences of the wealth of nutrients locked within. It squeezed the soft dirt between its fingers and a thick oil-like moisture pressed out of it, forming on the top in a thick film. The creature’s mandibles opened and it sucked the moisture in. The liquid flowed down the throat, and as it distributed through the body a wonderful vibrancy and power began coursing through all of its organs. Some of those organs had still been in a state of hibernation but now all came to life. The melody of sensations it had been experiencing from the outside world was now being met by a harmony of the inner.
Then, of a sudden, those inner sensations were overwhelmed by one strange urgency that rippled and pulsated from its abdomen. The throbbing grew stronger and moved upwards until the mandibles stretched wide and spewed out a dark bile onto the ground at its feet. The dry leaves quickly absorbed the liquid, thinning it until it disclosed a small, white, wriggling larva. A gap along the plating of the creature’s thorax widened, and she instinctively reached down, picked the infant form up, and placed it inside, securing it close to herself. She felt it squirm until its mouth found one of her inner glands, to which it latched contentedly and stilled itself. A new euphoria washed over her, and in the excitement she let out a thrill. The tone expanded like a bubble through all that thick air, pressing out against all matter. Then, instead of continuing out and dissipating, the tone buckled back inwards, bringing a chorus of responses to the creature. In that moment she felt the reality of each of the nearby trees, of the particles in the air, of the leaves on the ground and the dirt underneath. She understood their composition and their balance, their relations to one another, and the cycles of their growth and decay.
She thrilled again, this time with an intent. The tone expanded as before, and this time when it collapsed each of the nearby trees bent gently in her direction and trembled, scores of leaves cast off and tumbling to the ground at her feet. She was delighted by the effect, but did not repeat the experiment. With this connection between her and the elements of the world there came a reverence, one which discouraged frivolous use. Further, she realized that she was not a controller here. She sung and they harmonized, but she had a sense that that link flowed both ways.
To that end, she closed her eyes and, focusing on attuning a different sense, one that drew in from the thorax, she let the thrills of the world wash over her. She felt each sway of the trees, each puff of the wind, each warm pulsation of the light, even the growth of the larva within her, all of these were waves cascading upon her and each produced a unique harmonizing tremor in her body. Their wills and intents were understood by her through how they pulled and pushed her. She swayed as though buffeted by an invisible wind, and she understood now the purpose of this connection and the thrills set upon it, to communicate, to connect, to unify. She could distinguish how a tree far off in the distance groaned from lack of moisture and how the ground beneath her billowed to bear wet relief to it. A stony face in the other direction was vibrating out a herald of approaching gusts of wind and the trees were swaying to welcome them. For a moment she lost a sense of conscious identity, feeling instead as a drop in a great ocean through which all waves rippled in turn. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she hearkened intently, trying to make out if there was any call from one such as her. Signal by signal she disconnected her awareness from each tree, each mountain, each light, each wind, the entire symphony reducing one part after another. As the last of the elements she could identify were disconnected, she felt a somberness to find that there remained no call from any other creature.
There was, however, an undefined something. Buried amidst all the other thrills had been something so faint and vague she had not initially perceived it. The signal did not seem to emanate from a being, nor did it seem to communicate any physical properties. It was as though it were the reverberations of a history, an echo of past thrills, a ripple once so loud and strong that its eddies still whispered through the air countless ages after. What was more, though she could not explain why, the creature somehow felt that this pulsation was meant for her, was connected to her more intimately than any other thing in this world. It was as though she was hearing her own voice.
Her eyes opened and she turned to face the source of that history. She could tell that it was a very long ways off, but she had nowhere else to be. Wings buzzing to life behind her, she lifted into the heavy air and bore away towards that strange familiar.
***
If ever I am asked which of my stories is my personal favorite, my answer will always be “whichever one I wrote last.” To the reader preference is generally based on personal tastes, and I expect that even if you have enjoyed some of the things I write, other work of mine just doesn’t suit you as well. That’s simply to be expected.
For the writer, though, the preference comes solely from how closely the created work hews to the form originally imagined, as I mentioned in my post on Monday. Because writing is a skill, the nature of it is that you get better at it the more you do it, and so the latest work tends to be the truest to original intent. As I look at other works of mine, I do believe other entries have been more exciting, more emotional, and more realistic, but as of right now Deep Forest is the most true to myself and it is my favorite.
There is an unfortunate corollary to this, though, which is that the author’s previous works become less and less appealing to him or herself, and even outright embarrassing. Ascension, by its nature, involves better perceiving how much lower one was before. But this a whole other can of worms, one that I’d like to handle in my next post on Monday. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you then.
Give Me Pen and Paper 