one lives in hope of becoming a memory
Despite the darkness surrounding us, I could see the effects of my mother’s worry taking its toll on her body. I had watched her getting thinner and thinner, had watched her eyes sink into her skull as each day passed waiting for father to return with the rest of our family. In the past, when mother had worried, all I had to do was gently brush her side to remind her I was there, and it’s as if the world would shift in that instant to assuage those worries and bring her back to me. This, however, was something that I found myself wholly incapable of easing for her. She worried for the safety of not only the stallion she loved, but for the friend she’d never expected and the children who’d grown on her as if they were her own. And all of this weighed heavily on me.
It bothered me that I could do nothing to help my mother. It worried me that my family was gone. And as much as I wanted to filter out the negative empathic echoes that came to me from Borderline, I couldn’t bring myself to close myself off to her like that. So I had felt it all. And when Yanhua returned, there was a weight that lifted from both of us that had been crushing us in its own separate ways.
Things were getting back to normal, now–well, as normal as they could be. Mother had begun to put on the weight she’d lost. She’d stopped worrying so much about me venturing out into the darkness. And we were trying to get back to some semblance of life.
The sun had never returned, though, leaving a lingering worry about how we could survive this eternal night. Mother had cleverly suggested that her and I could replenish the grass growth throughout the forest for the residents so they wouldn’t starve. It is lucky she had awoken this ability within her and had passed it on to me as well, because without it, it’s hard to say any of us would ever leave this darkness alive. That was at least a bright spot on the dark horizon, but things were still out of kilter in a way that bothered me greatly.
Though I hid it well, sleep was hard to come by these days. I would curl up in my corner of our little den and pretend to sleep, breathing steadily with my eyes closed peacefully, shifting as was necessary, but otherwise lying still. In my mind, however, thoughts raced rampantly. Sometimes it felt like a dream, but I knew I was still awake, growing ever more tired and ever more delirious from lack of sleep. In my waking hours (or the hours I spent moving about), there were moments I would stumble in the dark, and luckily, no one could see. I did sleep, but it was seldom and often fitful sleep in which I would wake in a cold sweat, shivering and breathing heavily. Mother would gently brush her nose down my downy mane repeatedly to soothe me, and I would return to my pretend sleep to ease her worries. And father, well, I kept him locked out of my emotional memories for fear that he would find out the trouble I was in, and I didn’t need him worrying anymore about me than he already was.
I managed to keep my worry hidden well by eating regularly, as well as keeping more quiet than usual, though this evidence was not missed by mother nor father, either, who both commented how little I spoke anymore. I brushed it off by saying that all of this worry had exhausted me, and I just needed time to get back to myself. They still worried, but not as much as they would have if they’d known what was really going on inside my head.
A lot of what happened in my head was a broken record of helpless thoughts, and the rest was emptiness while I searched for something that could help my family. I would bring back the sun, if I could, and I had even tried (just to see) and failed.
When sufficient time had passed, and mother was beginning to accept that the darkness was here to stay, thereby allowing me greater freedom, I decided I would venture out into the unknown to see if I could find something that would help my family. In the darkness surrounding early morning, I lifted my weary body from the cold earth where I’d had yet another restless night, and I set off along a well-worn path through the redwoods. I didn’t know where I would go, but I trusted my heart to guide the way.
I had wandered off into the unknown once before. That was a long time ago, though, and I’ve grown older and wiser since then. Despite the darkness, I leave delicate echoes along the trail that I could pick up on so I could find my way home. They consisted of happy memories, those shared with my mother and father, and others shared with Reynard and Cheri, while still others yet were of other random things like Leonidas and Lilliana (which made me wonder how she was doing and if Leonidas was proving useful during a time like this).
I wander for hours, sometimes following a path, sometimes heading off into the unknown. I eventually cross the boundaries of Taiga into completely foreign territories. The trees turn into rolling fields. The rolling fields turn into steep mountains. Sometimes I followed a path heading straight up the mountains, while other times I wandered around. There were rivers and streams along the way where I stopped to soothe my aches away. I passed by a waterfall once, and stayed to listen to the rush of water crashing down over the edge of the cliff. Here, I made my way up and around to the top, and followed the river for a time before swerving away and down through a valley.
Eventually, I found myself making my way along a steep mountainside strewn with sharp rocks and prickly bushes. I could feel my knees shaking violently beneath me with each step I took, determination giving way to exhaustion. Halfway up the mountain, my legs could take no more. First, a foreleg gave out, sending me crashing to the ground face-first while my back legs scrambled to get back under me. But that wasn’t happening. Instead, I found myself tumbling off the side of the hill.
I crashed through the prickly bushes, which ripped and tore at my sides and back. Luckily I had grown a thick winter coat that protected me from most of the thorns, but that didn’t protect me from the sharp rocks that I crashed into along my way down the side of the mountain.
In the panic and turmoil, I didn’t realize that I had shoved a host of twisted and terror-filled emotional memories out in every direction for the world to feel. Birds screamed from the trees below. Nearby mountain goats fled for higher ground. Frogs croaked their displeasure. The crickets cut out their ceaseless chirping for just a brief moment. And something stirred high up the mountain, something that hadn’t stirred in quite some time.
I tumbled to the bottom of the ravine into a copse of trees, next to a gently babbling brook, before I finally came to a stop. Every muscle within my body ached. Every bone trembled. My heart pounded loudly and viscously within my chest. My throat was dry and sore. My head hurt in ways that I never imagined possible. And I found myself unable to move. So I lay there, wondering if this would be the last thing I would ever do on this earth. I hoped that mother and father wouldn’t miss me too terribly–oh, who am I kidding? This would positively break my mother.
I lay there for what seemed like a long time. Day could have turned into night (if there still was a day). Night could have turned back into day. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In reality, I lay there for a relatively short time, breathing unsteadily and waiting for death to come.
Then something moved between the trees. It was something large, something that sent shivers down my spine. The ground creaked beneath this creatures massive feet. The trees groaned as it pushed them aside to make its way through them. I bid my legs to move, but it would seem that terror had gripped them tightly to the ground, and instead, my eyes wide, I looked up, desperately trying to see what was approaching.
It got closer and closer until finally, it was upon me. And then it tripped. It tripped over me!
“Owie!” The thing screeched in a very child-like voice, and it hopped backward, nearly crushing me as it did so, and with a squeal, I launched myself up and away from the large creature, to which it stopped. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” The voice came through the darkness. “Oh my, oh my! I seem to be unable to see you, little one. I’m so sorry!” It repeated its apology.
“It’s…okay?” I stop in my tracks, still trying to see the creature in the darkness. It is large and shaggy and standing on two feet. I can barely make out its chubby midriff and a large thing on its back. A shell? Like a turtle? It turns its head, looking around, and I can see a beak sprouting from its unusually small head. It was certainly the most unusual creature I have ever seen, and I imagine it would look even more strange in the light if there were any.
“No, no, it’s not okay. Are you okay?” It sounded genuinely worried. I still felt weak and sore all over, so I opted for the truth in my answer. “Not really, but I think I’ll be okay.” A lot of my pain could be heard in that short sentence. “Oh. Okay.” It says. I get the distinct feeling that this creature is unsure of what to say next. But then, he says, “please, let me help you.” He comes closer, and I flinch, which he seems to see, which causes him to flinch, too, a much more obvious thing from such a large creature than it was from me.
“Who are you?” I ask, but then I can’t help myself, “What are you?” At this, he chuckles. “I am a molflyn, a creature of the mountain, and my name is Grodylin. Please, let me help you.” “I’m not sure you can.” I say this with defeat and sadness in my voice. “I am looking for a way to help my family in this darkness that has plagued the world.” I doubt that there was anything anyone could do. “Well, I can’t do much, but I do have a little bit of magic. Tell me about yourself and your family, and I can see what I can do.”
And so I do. I tell him about mother. I tell him about father. I tell him about our gifts, how mother has flora revival that she passed on to me, how father had empathic echoes and had passed those on to me. “Ah,” he had said at this, “that is what woke me from my stumble. You had some powerful emotions to rise me from my dreams.” When I tell him about my father’s glowing markings, he stops me. “Glowing markings?” He says. There is something about the way he asks that tells me there might be something more to this. “Yes,” I say, “It’s makes things a little easier in this darkness.”
Grodylin claps his hands excitedly at this. “I know what I can do! I know what I can do!” I stare at him. Could this be the key to all of our problems? “Oh, but it’s not much,” he says, deflating quickly. “Anything would help.” He sits there in silence for a few seconds, then says, “Well, I can sense that those glowing markings reside within you, dormant. I could bring that ability out in you, and at least it could be a small light to guide your way. It’s the least I could do, since I almost killed you.” This time I stop to think for a few moments. It’s true, it wasn’t much, but it was something. “Okay,” I say, grateful for something.
He takes a deep breath, then blows it over me. It is a hot breath that leaves me tingling in the cold, dark air. And I wait.
It doesn’t happen right away, but then something happens. My socks begin to glow, faintly at first, then a little brighter. I gape at the effect it has, lighting the ground beneath me so I could see where I was standing. “Th-thank you,” I stammer. “It was my pleasure.” He pauses for a moment, and then, “Well, Memorie, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I really shouldn’t be here. I’m not exactly supposed to show myself to others. So even though I’d love to stay and get to know you, I’d better be on my way. Thank you for our little chat.” “Goodbye, Grodylin” I say, sad to see him go.
It was only after he left that I realized I hadn’t even told him my name. I chuckle softly to myself. What an odd creature, I think, then I turn back toward home.
It bothered me that I could do nothing to help my mother. It worried me that my family was gone. And as much as I wanted to filter out the negative empathic echoes that came to me from Borderline, I couldn’t bring myself to close myself off to her like that. So I had felt it all. And when Yanhua returned, there was a weight that lifted from both of us that had been crushing us in its own separate ways.
Things were getting back to normal, now–well, as normal as they could be. Mother had begun to put on the weight she’d lost. She’d stopped worrying so much about me venturing out into the darkness. And we were trying to get back to some semblance of life.
The sun had never returned, though, leaving a lingering worry about how we could survive this eternal night. Mother had cleverly suggested that her and I could replenish the grass growth throughout the forest for the residents so they wouldn’t starve. It is lucky she had awoken this ability within her and had passed it on to me as well, because without it, it’s hard to say any of us would ever leave this darkness alive. That was at least a bright spot on the dark horizon, but things were still out of kilter in a way that bothered me greatly.
Though I hid it well, sleep was hard to come by these days. I would curl up in my corner of our little den and pretend to sleep, breathing steadily with my eyes closed peacefully, shifting as was necessary, but otherwise lying still. In my mind, however, thoughts raced rampantly. Sometimes it felt like a dream, but I knew I was still awake, growing ever more tired and ever more delirious from lack of sleep. In my waking hours (or the hours I spent moving about), there were moments I would stumble in the dark, and luckily, no one could see. I did sleep, but it was seldom and often fitful sleep in which I would wake in a cold sweat, shivering and breathing heavily. Mother would gently brush her nose down my downy mane repeatedly to soothe me, and I would return to my pretend sleep to ease her worries. And father, well, I kept him locked out of my emotional memories for fear that he would find out the trouble I was in, and I didn’t need him worrying anymore about me than he already was.
I managed to keep my worry hidden well by eating regularly, as well as keeping more quiet than usual, though this evidence was not missed by mother nor father, either, who both commented how little I spoke anymore. I brushed it off by saying that all of this worry had exhausted me, and I just needed time to get back to myself. They still worried, but not as much as they would have if they’d known what was really going on inside my head.
A lot of what happened in my head was a broken record of helpless thoughts, and the rest was emptiness while I searched for something that could help my family. I would bring back the sun, if I could, and I had even tried (just to see) and failed.
When sufficient time had passed, and mother was beginning to accept that the darkness was here to stay, thereby allowing me greater freedom, I decided I would venture out into the unknown to see if I could find something that would help my family. In the darkness surrounding early morning, I lifted my weary body from the cold earth where I’d had yet another restless night, and I set off along a well-worn path through the redwoods. I didn’t know where I would go, but I trusted my heart to guide the way.
I had wandered off into the unknown once before. That was a long time ago, though, and I’ve grown older and wiser since then. Despite the darkness, I leave delicate echoes along the trail that I could pick up on so I could find my way home. They consisted of happy memories, those shared with my mother and father, and others shared with Reynard and Cheri, while still others yet were of other random things like Leonidas and Lilliana (which made me wonder how she was doing and if Leonidas was proving useful during a time like this).
I wander for hours, sometimes following a path, sometimes heading off into the unknown. I eventually cross the boundaries of Taiga into completely foreign territories. The trees turn into rolling fields. The rolling fields turn into steep mountains. Sometimes I followed a path heading straight up the mountains, while other times I wandered around. There were rivers and streams along the way where I stopped to soothe my aches away. I passed by a waterfall once, and stayed to listen to the rush of water crashing down over the edge of the cliff. Here, I made my way up and around to the top, and followed the river for a time before swerving away and down through a valley.
Eventually, I found myself making my way along a steep mountainside strewn with sharp rocks and prickly bushes. I could feel my knees shaking violently beneath me with each step I took, determination giving way to exhaustion. Halfway up the mountain, my legs could take no more. First, a foreleg gave out, sending me crashing to the ground face-first while my back legs scrambled to get back under me. But that wasn’t happening. Instead, I found myself tumbling off the side of the hill.
I crashed through the prickly bushes, which ripped and tore at my sides and back. Luckily I had grown a thick winter coat that protected me from most of the thorns, but that didn’t protect me from the sharp rocks that I crashed into along my way down the side of the mountain.
In the panic and turmoil, I didn’t realize that I had shoved a host of twisted and terror-filled emotional memories out in every direction for the world to feel. Birds screamed from the trees below. Nearby mountain goats fled for higher ground. Frogs croaked their displeasure. The crickets cut out their ceaseless chirping for just a brief moment. And something stirred high up the mountain, something that hadn’t stirred in quite some time.
I tumbled to the bottom of the ravine into a copse of trees, next to a gently babbling brook, before I finally came to a stop. Every muscle within my body ached. Every bone trembled. My heart pounded loudly and viscously within my chest. My throat was dry and sore. My head hurt in ways that I never imagined possible. And I found myself unable to move. So I lay there, wondering if this would be the last thing I would ever do on this earth. I hoped that mother and father wouldn’t miss me too terribly–oh, who am I kidding? This would positively break my mother.
I lay there for what seemed like a long time. Day could have turned into night (if there still was a day). Night could have turned back into day. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In reality, I lay there for a relatively short time, breathing unsteadily and waiting for death to come.
Then something moved between the trees. It was something large, something that sent shivers down my spine. The ground creaked beneath this creatures massive feet. The trees groaned as it pushed them aside to make its way through them. I bid my legs to move, but it would seem that terror had gripped them tightly to the ground, and instead, my eyes wide, I looked up, desperately trying to see what was approaching.
It got closer and closer until finally, it was upon me. And then it tripped. It tripped over me!
“Owie!” The thing screeched in a very child-like voice, and it hopped backward, nearly crushing me as it did so, and with a squeal, I launched myself up and away from the large creature, to which it stopped. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” The voice came through the darkness. “Oh my, oh my! I seem to be unable to see you, little one. I’m so sorry!” It repeated its apology.
“It’s…okay?” I stop in my tracks, still trying to see the creature in the darkness. It is large and shaggy and standing on two feet. I can barely make out its chubby midriff and a large thing on its back. A shell? Like a turtle? It turns its head, looking around, and I can see a beak sprouting from its unusually small head. It was certainly the most unusual creature I have ever seen, and I imagine it would look even more strange in the light if there were any.
“No, no, it’s not okay. Are you okay?” It sounded genuinely worried. I still felt weak and sore all over, so I opted for the truth in my answer. “Not really, but I think I’ll be okay.” A lot of my pain could be heard in that short sentence. “Oh. Okay.” It says. I get the distinct feeling that this creature is unsure of what to say next. But then, he says, “please, let me help you.” He comes closer, and I flinch, which he seems to see, which causes him to flinch, too, a much more obvious thing from such a large creature than it was from me.
“Who are you?” I ask, but then I can’t help myself, “What are you?” At this, he chuckles. “I am a molflyn, a creature of the mountain, and my name is Grodylin. Please, let me help you.” “I’m not sure you can.” I say this with defeat and sadness in my voice. “I am looking for a way to help my family in this darkness that has plagued the world.” I doubt that there was anything anyone could do. “Well, I can’t do much, but I do have a little bit of magic. Tell me about yourself and your family, and I can see what I can do.”
And so I do. I tell him about mother. I tell him about father. I tell him about our gifts, how mother has flora revival that she passed on to me, how father had empathic echoes and had passed those on to me. “Ah,” he had said at this, “that is what woke me from my stumble. You had some powerful emotions to rise me from my dreams.” When I tell him about my father’s glowing markings, he stops me. “Glowing markings?” He says. There is something about the way he asks that tells me there might be something more to this. “Yes,” I say, “It’s makes things a little easier in this darkness.”
Grodylin claps his hands excitedly at this. “I know what I can do! I know what I can do!” I stare at him. Could this be the key to all of our problems? “Oh, but it’s not much,” he says, deflating quickly. “Anything would help.” He sits there in silence for a few seconds, then says, “Well, I can sense that those glowing markings reside within you, dormant. I could bring that ability out in you, and at least it could be a small light to guide your way. It’s the least I could do, since I almost killed you.” This time I stop to think for a few moments. It’s true, it wasn’t much, but it was something. “Okay,” I say, grateful for something.
He takes a deep breath, then blows it over me. It is a hot breath that leaves me tingling in the cold, dark air. And I wait.
It doesn’t happen right away, but then something happens. My socks begin to glow, faintly at first, then a little brighter. I gape at the effect it has, lighting the ground beneath me so I could see where I was standing. “Th-thank you,” I stammer. “It was my pleasure.” He pauses for a moment, and then, “Well, Memorie, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I really shouldn’t be here. I’m not exactly supposed to show myself to others. So even though I’d love to stay and get to know you, I’d better be on my way. Thank you for our little chat.” “Goodbye, Grodylin” I say, sad to see him go.
It was only after he left that I realized I hadn’t even told him my name. I chuckle softly to myself. What an odd creature, I think, then I turn back toward home.
memorie
