Can you imagine missing your own deadline two weeks in a row? I can. Here’s a draft of a story about love and aging. Theatrical Geography will actually be back next week.
Until then, I hope you find peace and pleasure! And if you like this, share it!
And they were very happy until the fact of life told them they no longer would be.
So it was time to go, one understood. They had lived a long time, long enough to watch many seasons change, watch the seasons change till nobody could recognize what a season was anymore. All their t-shirts had been worn threadbare decades ago and they no longer needed nutrition - their bodies had grown wise, learning photosynthesis and how to turn unused motion back into calories - yet still they cooked and gardened with each other, making eyes and ridiculous jokes with no set-up or punchline. They had lived a long time and they both knew they’d have no regrets when it was time to transition.
When the younger (only by nine days, mind you) woke in the night, they turned their head to their companion (who was long asleep, dreaming of flamingoes and long-extinct sitcoms) and said the only true thing worth saying anymore, before they felt their soul fly like confetti on the slightest gust.
The one who was left dreamt more, having no idea what had transpired, only feeling a cold wind on their cheek like a hand. When they woke, they turned to tell the other.
For convenience, we’ll call the one left behind Alba.
We’ll call the other one the Wanderer.
Alba was not wracked with grief. Instead, in the moon’s blue light, they took in the Wanderer’s leavings, the sight of them, and saw an empty glass, waiting to be filled. Alba knew the Wanderer had always gone out of their way to get lost and to seek and Alba knew that the Wanderer had been practicing astral projection for years to little avail. If anything, this was worthy of a celebration.
They waited. Got up, got a glass of water. Stared out the window to the night garden which was very similar to the day garden, but the tomatoes and aubergines gleamed like obsidian. The Wanderer did like the night garden, but they thought of the night garden as an outgrowth of the day garden. Often awake at these deliriously thoughtful hours, Alba adored the night garden and tended to it with every ounce of their attention, delighting in the depths a fruit, flower, or leaf could take on when flattened to a matte shadow. Aware of time passing, Alba gazed for as long as they could imagine a wandering would last.
In bed, Alba passed their hand over the Wanderer’s unseeing eyes, wondering if perhaps their darling had gotten lost on the way back.
But no, no, no, they trusted the Wanderer and so they waited. The first day passed and they tended the day-and-night garden, fed the chickens and cats, made mosaics with the youths in the town. This was awkward at first, because Alba wasn’t the one to speak plainly about things that other adults kept hush hush about. And all the young people asked about the Wanderer.
“They’re out,” Alba said.
“Out where?”
“Out of body. Watch your hands.”
They’d cut their own fingers many times.
The backs of the Wanderer’s legs and torso had begun to go green; their whole body gone stiff. The bedroom smelled of chicory and lemons. Alba sniffed. They submerged the Wanderer’s body in a large bath of honey gifted by their neighbor’s bees. It had previously been portioned out for catastrophe months. Weeks passed.
Where are you?
The Wanderer knew things that nobody else did, as Alba knew many things the Wanderer didn’t. Alba, for example, did not know how to track a soul. They knew, certainly, how to call for a soul; how to listen for one; how to manifest one. Alba had done all this. But a soul’s path once out of the body is never a linear one. The Wanderer could be anywhere right now, following all sorts of dream logic or curiosities across space and time. How could the Wanderer ever find their way back now? Alba no longer trusted that all things were well.
On the second day of the third week of the Wanderer’s absence, one of the youths asked - again - where the Wanderer was. And Alba had no more hope to give.
“I don’t know. I don’t,” they said.
The young person gave Alba a look. “Have you tried listening for them?”
“No.”
“Then,” the youth said, hunching his shoulders then crossing his arms with a frown crossing his face, “that seems obvious.”
It would’ve been insulting if Alba had been two-hundred-seventy years younger, but the thought didn’t even cross their mind. Instead, they took the advice. Later that night, they went to the night garden, sat down next to the nasturtiums and closed their eyes and breathed. The moon passed across their neck. The tomatoes rustled in the breeze. They inhaled deep and smelled honey.
If you had asked where the Wanderer would go in life, there wasn’t a satisfying answer. Something like: “Wherever Alba would follow me,” a non-answer granted alongside a smile. Alba’s own ambitions often latched them onto the Wanderer’s curiosities. Alba unclenched their mind in the night garden. Wind pushing against their face.
Sea breeze.
Mist. Waves. Goats. Goats?
Goats. A song. Sung. Chorally?
Chorally.
... to yooooouu...
Alba opened their eyes.
It didn’t take so long to get to the shoreline; the ocean had come far enough inland that the walk was a long distraction. Boats tapping their hulls against window sills. Bricks. Red dust running in long stripes of flavor out to the water, the slow erosion of salt finally taking its toll.
Alba pushed out, hopping their legs in, nervous, the boat shook, they pushed out. The Wanderer had always wanted to go to the place, the place far away. It was dawn when Alba left.
There’s not much to say about this period of time except that there was a great deal of paddling, and - as with most journeys these days v b- a great deal of heat wiping sweat and salt on Alba’s neck, even as the sun drew whatever moisture they had out. Alba felt every bead of oil on their body, rolling and catching on hairs, their skin peeling from the heat revealing green, green, green veins catching the light and reconfiguring it to sugar. Alba, paddling and paddling, did not think during the trip. A soul removed from the body is remarkably quiet and travels often in memories and intuition: souls have been discovered in wedding dresses, pearls, a lush serving of sauteed scallops, haunting houses. Alba knew that they could be a node if they kept their mind unclenched.
They heard the papery waves lash against the side of their boat, the seagulls trill and flies rattling, they heard the trail of that same song.
They did not hear the Wanderer.
The sun set many times.
The journey was long. But we’ll make it short. No need to lose anymore time.
When Alba arrived at the mountains, they were no longer the sword-like peaks that the Wanderer had told Alba about for many years. Instead, Alba found a series of hills close together like bumps on a spine. As they drew closer, they looked overboard and saw, through azollas on the surface and a deep turquoise water, the remains of what once stood above the sea - dead vegetation had given way to seaweeds and unfamiliar fish finding solace in the wreckages of shops, homes, boats.
Shoring on an orange clay trail and almost tripping in the ebb of difficult waves (were their legs always this unstable?) Alba saw at the “summit” the contained glow of a pink dawn and heard, again, a song. The words were clearer, but the voices had disseminated across a span of languages, of tones, drawing in new sounds or - not new, but so old and familiar that they caught Alba in the gut: a radio buzz, cardinal song, geese, the hum of music they thought would never be played again, not after two hundred years of silence.
But the memories were strong and even as they began the hike, Alba found themselves reciting: do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Silly. They climbed past waves of bristling trees. Goats gnawing on cans and plastic. The rusting skeletons of bicycles barely holding on, foundations from long ago homes. Chickens running about. In the unending catastrophes, many people had died - and some had escaped. Those who escaped learned in the same way Alba and the Wanderer had, hearing wisdom and science from plants who had taken pity on these poor humans whose destruction had so little to do with their own actions. The trees told these survivors how to build boats from the perishing forests. They found homes away from the saltwater - the memories were too painful.
Alba slapped a mosquito on their arm, leaving a bloodstain. Mosquitoes were fine. Goats and chickens were thriving here.
Things are fine, thought Alba. Things are well.
The trees petered out - only stumps at the peak - and the remnants of humanity vanished. On this clearing, only a single tree grew with many winding trunks running their way out and around itself, leading to the soft glow of dawn-hued flowers huddling in clouds on the branches. That same song from earlier had lost its shape in the cacophony of sounds, human sounds, the sound of lost things, people, and others. Alba’s heart stung. They stepped closer, reaching their old arm, with its many blue veins, up to a low-hanging flower and brought it close to its ear.
Inside, they heard a party. Surprise! Laughter. Spilling drinks, a person who wasn’t expected has arrived and a reunion is at hand. There is an absolute joy, an unambivalent joy, a joy untainted by a future or a past.
Alba drew back and felt like they were choking on a peach pit. A seaward gust passed through them and Alba heard silence, then the tree blustering, then silence, then waves crashing. Waves, huh. I want to remember this sound, Alba thought. The gust outward gave way to a breeze inward and Alba felt the warm wind on their spine like a lover’s hand, running up and down each vertebra.
And with that, all things vanished, condensed into a single distant point, save Alba, and the tree.
It’s very interesting, isn’t it.
A hand on Alba’s spine.
No, don't turn around. You won’t be delighted, just surprised.
Alba did not turn around.
You shouldn’t have followed me. Or put my body in honey.
No, Alba shouldn’t have.
“You wouldn’t have wanted to come home if your skin was falling off and you were bloating with decay.”
The Wanderer sighed.
That’s not incorrect. Look, what do you want?
“To bring you back home.”
Another sigh. This wasn’t personal or exasperation - a soul is mostly air flavored by the memory of being in a specific person’s lungs - but Alba felt smudged by it. “So, then,” they said, “come along. Don’t want the bees making a hive of you.”
Dear, let them.
The Wanderer placed a hand on Alba’s cheek, wrapped an arm around their waist, placed a palm on Alba’s heart. Alba was certain they did not have so many arms, but even so, they wanted as many limbs as the Wanderer could spare to tangle with their own.
“No, no, you would be miserable coming home to a body of bees. And what about me? What am I to do?” Alba felt the air cradle them and the Wanderer remembered what blood felt like.
Teach the young people to tend to the day garden and appreciate the night garden. When will you be done, when can you sing the song? Listen.
Alba could hear waves and a bottle of champagne uncorking and the Wanderer breathing close to their ear, close to their lips and cheers and a stripe of music in another room - the Wanderer’s lips opening and closing around the only true thing worth saying any more.
And again, it was night on a sunken mountain.
Alba waited. Just long enough to be certain, a long enough time that eventually the sun rose. They sighed and heard the tree sigh, before it quieted down, leaving only the waves again and the sun and the clouds far off to the east.
Alba heaved themself down past the goats and chickens and trash back to their boat and found themself colored a lovely orange from the dawn. It looked good with their old veins. They sat at the boat trying to perceive the future. They had struggled with the future years ago, long ago, so many years ago, that they forgot what it meant to be so uncertain, to be so afraid of being so uncertain.
Here they were. It was not truly a fear of the unknown. They pushed the boat out, their breathing heavier than it had been on the way in. They were getting older, alright. What anchored them to their past anymore?
They breathed heavily, feeling the weight of their lungs filled with air - their boat bobbing with the waves, drifting slowly over drowned trees towards the sunrise. They watched each exhale carried out to sea, like shreds of confetti kissing each other for the briefest of moments.