O {Brave} New World (That Has Such People In It) [cici]
Jun 27, 2017 22:44:05 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2017 22:44:05 GMT -5
Rum Tum Tugger Zori- Back Again Not a moment passes that I don’t wonder how I became so lucky to have a partner like Freya. Of all the folk stretching from here to the other sea, we’re two pieces fitting together. Our hearts unfolded like roses, and our love moved like the sea. Two souls searching across this great earth, but like a force of nature, never stopping. Doubt was a shadow behind us, and hope the sun in our faces. Each year’s just another edge and wrinkle to show us the way forward. And so we go—we’ve gone—because we’re a force of nature, stopping only when the world shakes us from its coil. tagged (Frumtum) There was a great tall patch of grass at the edge of a forest that looked out onto the sea. I remember her standing in front of me, and watching the wind push her hair over her left shoulder. She never used to like the silence as much as me, but age had brought words to my lips and a quiet to her heart. I can’t say how long the silence was as we took in the waves crashing against the rocks below. Time lost a lot of its weight when we strayed so far from the districts. Sunburns and the first blackberries of spring measured our moments, not hours. “We should stay here.” I don’t know if the words were what she needed to hear, but in between the tall grass and me it’s what I find. There’s a little crop of houses along the edge of shore. Rooves that are gently used and windows cracked, they’re in need of love and affection. But they can shelter us from the winter cold, or a summer thunderstorms. I thought a heart could always stay youthful, that we’d want to keep pressing to climb every mountain. But a boy searches for his heart—it’s what keeps his feet moving. A man searches for truth; he doesn’t need another hillside or waterfall, but a place where he can share a life. My bones aren’t old, yet, but I’m old enough to know there’s a new beginning in starting a place of our own. I stare at the back of her and think of another little head of curly hair at her side. A little girl just as proud and brave as her momma, or a boy as gentle and sincere. We don’t want a war with the world, or to break things apart. It’s never been our way. But we want a place where folks can do good by one another, and share what they’ve got. We’ve come across enough strays to know there’s good men and women out in the wild. If they want to stay for a day, or month, if they want to settle and build with us then we don’t turn them away. It’s strange, starting a world outside the world. The doubts come to me in the early days, because we're young and foolish and scared, but she keeps me from falling apart. She needs more than the silence I give her. Now we’re a few strong—a rag tag family, but a little colony of our own. Two winters passed and folks come and go, but some stay. A small family, a boy that’s a runaway, an old couple, folks that flit in and out our lives. They share sadness and love and pieces of themselves. We fix the shacks along the sea, and build one another up. It’s enough that they start looking at me and Freya to make the rules for the new ones, and I—I wonder what that’ll mean for us. “It’s changing out there,” I say to her. The summer afternoon’s gone from sunshine to grey clouds, and there’s a rumble in the distance. I’m in the little kitchen of our house, ready to wash the fruit and leaves I’ve collected. I can hear her in the den, but can’t tell if she’s reading or poking into something else (as she does). “Roger wants me to make a rule about folks we don’t know coming around after sunset, but I told him I don’t make the rules around here…” Because I don’t, at least, never had to do much more than make sure folks were getting along. “Freya?” |
