PT 2
The girl holds her breath — she always does in her process of “naming things”. The game of words — assigning names to everything in eyesight. Categorizing “the things” so they fit into nice, neat little boxes — safe, secure, contained. She always holds her breath while playing this game.
Except this time, it’s different. As she holds her breath, it’s as if she can’t breathe. Perfectly logical to the outside world: Holding your breath means, of course, you stop breathing — the loss of life, of living. But she, the girl, is not a part of the outside world any longer. There has been a comfort in holding her breath, a sense of peace and control. However, in this moment, the more she holds her breath, the less control she feels, the more she suffocates. And so she panics, feeling caught somewhere between “being” and “not being”, life and death. Staring into the vastness of the ocean before her, both inviting and terrifying, she digs her toes deeper into the sand — willing herself to to move closer to the water’s edge. She knows everything will be different if she can just get to the water.
Suddenly, she hears a noise behind her and tenses — all of her senses kicking into to gear. The monster that has tracked her endlessly, following her scent at every turn, has now found her. She knows she must move, must react, must do something…but here she remains, stuck and unsure — waiting for her certain fate.
Though she can’t remember the particulars of how this pursuit began or how she got to the island, she knows it is linked to where she was going next — but where was that again? She has no idea. All she remembers is waking up, at the edge of the ocean, and in this strange place — devoid of the people, places, and things she has known. The monster steps forward from the brush and the girl feels her terror lurch. She closes her eyes and braces for impact — is this the ending or the beginning?
From beneath the lush undergrowth of the island, jungle reeds part and a lynx appears. Not just any lynx, but a golden lynx with sharp, emerald eyes. Is this the monster? Couldn’t be, it’s so beautiful. The girl bristles. After all of the distance she has traveled, the lives lost, the fact that this should be her fate — to be consumed by a big gold cat…so strange, so sad, so fitting. Beauty can devour, she intimately knows. But not even in the wildest of her stories would she dream of this — and she loves to dream and tell stories. Another memory stirs from deep, down somewhere — something about telling stories has brought her here, to the end of the universe, an appetizer for this giant fantastical feline…but what? She has no clue and, lost in the absurdity of it all, almost laughs out loud.
Almost.
//
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