Perhaps
even I
Hello friends! Pleased to announce the nights are finally cool enough to permit sleeping. Today’s post brought to you in part by the exceptional world building and storytelling of my friend Regina Sage, whose writing can be found here on Substack and in free-range book form. Thank you Regina!
One of the things I love about writing is throwing myself into a different experience, a different set of rules, and experiencing the world anew. There is so much richness to be had when we listen to the stories of others. Even when the experience of the other is so dislike ours as to be completely unrecognizable.
Somniosus
They tell me a great deal of time has passed. I do not know, for I do not feel time the way they do.
They tell me it’s dark here. They tell me its cold. But I don’t know those things. I feel my way in endless freedom. I have never known anything else. The Ocean breathes around me. We breath together, she and I.
Their songs reach me, telling me of the world above. They sing of the sun, of the surface, of air. Of warm, bright waters.
But that is not my home. I was not made for the light. I was made for the deep. Daylight was never anything but a strange dream to me. I prefer the way this darkness holds me. It is not weightless; it is profound. It is complete.
I am the same as I have ever been, except the fading of my eyes as they are eaten away over the centuries. I do not know fear. I move slowly. I wait patiently for the Ocean to provide. She made me to live here in tranquility, drifting through her silent expanses unhindered.
I have had many pups of my own, too many to count. I know the Ocean cares for them as she has cared for me, as she has cared for us all, for as long as we have been here. Since the time when the land was barren, when there was only endless waters and a few young stars in the sky.
The whales and dolphins sing of new stars being born, of ships passing, of centuries coming and going. I smell their warm blood, and feel their joy. I hear them celebrate when their calves are born, and mourn their loved ones when they pass. I come to them when they drift down, on their last journey to the dark. I wait for them. I welcome them to their rest, as I have welcomed all whom the Ocean brings to me.
I cannot sing, nor do I have anyone to tell stories to. I am simply here to witness, to know, to remember. To be awake to the richness and the wholeness of the deep. It is all I can offer, and all she requires of me. I do not know if she made this place for me, or I for this place, but it does not matter. I will be as she made me, until I am no more.
Perhaps I will keep on living forever. Or perhaps I too have already crossed over into death without knowing it. Perhaps I am a memory. Or perhaps, after all of this time, I have become death.
Yes: perhaps
even I
am Death.
Thank you for reading!
-Astrid
I like "Perhaps" because it takes me to a quiet and somber realm but never reveals fully who the speaker is. Certainly, the answer leans toward the speaker being "Death," but if she isn't certain herself then why should we assume anything more definitive. Thus, the whole piece seems a mere brushstroke on the universe's canvas.