Where do we go from here?
A story I wrote at the request of a friend...I hope she doesn't mind sharing!
Two people stand on the edge of a cliff. The sky is dark. A storm is forever on the horizon. All the clouds have gathered at the edge of the cliff as if to assess the situation below. They grow darker and darker until they are almost black, mustering behind the two figures. Below the clouds, the landscape is wreathed in a heavy fog, except for the very edge of the cliff. There the two stand close enough to touch. They can see along the edge to their right and left, but not behind and at the cliff’s edge there is only more fog that gives way to an overwhelming sense of space below.
It’s possible to feel the clouds on their backs though they make no move to find shelter. Nor do they cower or try to scramble down the cliff’s edge, search for footholds or caves in its sheer walls. They have tried these things already, many times. The fog never makes it beyond the cliff’s edge, the clouds never pour down their storm.
“We have to decide today or I’m going to scream.”
The speaker’s features are fuzzy. She is a woman, relatively young. Her eyes are like shaded stones under flowing water.
The other has a big black beard and the curly, tousled hair of youth. His lips are full, not shriveled like they were when he first arrived here, dehydrated beyond recognition. Whether this matters to his companion is a question that fills his mind for days. They know each other. Have known each other for quite a while.
He says, “I don’t know why you think your idea is the right one.”
“I think I’m right because of the clouds. We’ve looked everywhere. This is where they want us.”
“They could be sending us to a worse place. This isn’t the worst place in the world.”
She gives a little laugh.
The clouds may grow a shade darker or maybe not.
Someone walks out to the cliff on their right. He has bright white tufts of hair crowning a wide bald patch. He steps off the cliff with a deep and solemn sigh.
“I’ve talked to a few of them, you know,” she says. “They said you could ask for a specific form, but there were no guarantees.”
“Ask who?”
The woman gestures to the sky, as if to say, this place.
“I’ve been thinking a lot, and I think I’d like to go back as a butterfly. Maybe a tropical one. It’s quick, but you see the world in a totally different way. There might even be some travel involved.”
“Not many butterflies left when we were there.”
The woman shrugs.
“I can ask.”
“I don’t know, I’d rather be a cockroach or something. To survive what’s coming. What’s already happening.”
“Well, that’s why I thought butterfly. I could see what’s going on, and be back here fast enough, maybe I could make a better assessment then.”
“Is that even allowed?”
“I don’t see why not.”
The man looks pensive now, he peers over the cliff edge, then off to the left. It is cliff edge, as far as the eye can see. Occasionally another person, or two or three come out of the fog. Just like the last one some jump into the abyss without any apparent thought. Others turn around and return to the dimness. Others run to the cliff edge and dive with a shout. Some stand there, just like them, and start to fade from view. He has seen every possible variation. He wonders if he is fading too.
“We should go back as people,” he says.
“Why would you want that?”
“We have unfinished business.”
“We’d go back as babies, you know. And we’d forget all about this.”
“If we jump together, do we go back together?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to be human again?”
“I don’t know. I just want to make a decision.”
“Come on. What if we went back and ended up together again? That doesn’t appeal at all?”
“Sure it does. But you’re making a lot of assumptions. What if we jump together and ask to be humans and end up being twins or something.”
“Oh come on. We could also end up neighbours. In rival families. Star-crossed lovers.” He tries to get her to smile at the idea, tries to get her onside. But she doesn’t look at him.
“It’s a possibility.” Her mouth is set in a firm line. He looks away, irritated.
“I’ll just ask the clouds to make us both humans, since you think that’s how this works.”
She doesn’t reply.
Does the darkness below them swirl a little? In anticipation of a decision? It feels like they’ve been on the precipice of deciding for a million lifetimes. Maybe this is what happens. Indecisive people jump when eventually they can’t stand doing nothing. That’s how she feels. She wonders if he feels the same at all.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too. That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“It does. We never say it, but it does. You want to go and be something else.”
“I’d be interested in trying something else, yes.”
“Without me.”
“I never said that.”
“We were perfect before. We were so happy.”
“We were happy. But nothing is perfect. Look how we got here.”
“You were never this stoic.”
“Death changed me, I guess.”
“You cared about people. We could be the next generation—”
“We don’t know that.”
“The only guarantee is that what happened to us is happening to others.” He is agitated now. He will not lose the fight this time. He will not give in to her eerie, infuriating calm.
“We could help in other ways,” she says. “Or we could go and try something entirely different.”
“So give up?”
“We only give up if we insist on staying here.”
“How do you know that? How do you even know there are no guarantees?”
“Because there aren’t any! Surely ending up here has shown you that? You want to save the world, but you couldn’t make a decision to save your life right now and it is driving me crazy!”
It feels like years go by in the ensuing silence.
“What do you want to do.”
“I want to fall and make a wish. Right now.”
“What would a life be without you?” he says. “You are the only good thing. Even when you yell at me.”
“I wasn’t the only good thing back home.”
“Then you’ve forgotten what our world was like.”
“There was sour candy. There was rain when you thought you’d seen the last of it. There was guerilla theatre in front of government buildings. There was dancing, even in the tunnels. Your mother was good.”
“I suppose she was good. My sisters were good.”
The man starts to cry. The woman tries very hard not to join him but eventually, she succumbs.
“What do you think they went back as?”
“Your mom went back as a sea otter, I bet. The ocean at her disposal. Julia and Luz went back as lichen I bet.”
He laughs through his tears.
“Because they were inseparable.”
“Something like that.”
“Not like us.”
“We both want to make a different world, I just want to try it a different way.”
“You mean I want the same and you want new.”
“You think there is only one way of being that matters.”
“I think that you made me want to live our life all the way through. We should have grown old together and lived happily with our children and grandchildren.”
“We should have.”
“A trace of you will be with me always. No matter the number of lives.”
“Maybe our new selves will recognize each other.”
“Maybe my genetic code will have a homing sequence in it and take me to you.”
She smiles sadly. “It’s a possibility.”
“No guarantees,” he says and smiles too, as if to say, I can’t take much more of this. She hopes that’s what he is saying at least.
She kisses him on the cheek, kisses the tears and then his mouth. They hold each other for a long while before she lets go.
“See you on the other side,” she says, and she runs off the cliff and falls into the darkness, no looking back. He watches her go, watches until he can’t see her anymore. In the falling, she can’t help but laugh. She feels a kind of peace she has never felt before. The clouds above dance and roil in a storm of creation.
And because she didn’t say, but might still have chosen it, when he jumps he asks the clouds and the sky and the darkness that engulfs him if he can be a tree that might shelter people on a too hot, too dry day or that might offer respite for a butterfly on its long migration from life to death.