Āvorn
Have you ever woken up and known, for just a second, that you forgot something important.. and then it was gone?
You wake in a field that has no edges.
You do not know your name. You knew it once. You are sure of that much. It sat in your mouth like a stone you carried everywhere, and now the stone is gone and your mouth is empty and you cannot remember its shape.. You have the slight feeling of something being there, but its not.
So you do the only thing there is to do.
You walk.
The first ones are already there when you arrive.
You did not see them come. They are simply standing, the way mountains are simply standing, as if they were waiting long before you and will wait long after. Wings. Though wings is not the right word. The word for what they have has not been made yet.
One of them turns its head toward you.
You want to say something. You do not. They are too large for it, or too old, and the question you have feels small held up against them. It does not speak either. But you feel something pass between you, like a hand resting on your shoulder from behind. And the strangest thing happens.. You feel recognised. The way you feel when someone says your name in a crowd and you turn before you even know why.
But you have no name.
So why did you turn?
You keep walking, because the feeling is too big to stand still inside.
The field changes around you. Not like a room changes when you walk through a door, but more like how a feeling changes into a different feeling without you noticing the moment it happened.
And there are more of them now, and what's different is they are standing together.
Two of them, close! And there is this silence, quietness, and its not awkward between them, it feels like the way old friends sit close without needing to talk for long periods of time. One is the colour of morning before the sun is up and the other is the colour of gold left out in the rain.
You sit with them for a while. But has it truly been a while? Because then it seems like you do not know how long since time does not work the way it used to, and anyway, you have nowhere to be.
Twice you almost ask. Both times something stops you, and it is not only shyness. It is the sense, which you cannot confirm and cannot shake, that they already know. That the question left your mouth long before you thought of opening it. If that is true then speaking is a thing you would be doing for yourself, not for them, and you are not sure you have earned it.
When you stand to leave, you understand something you cannot say in words. So I will try to say it for you ::
They were not made to fly away from the field. They were made so the field could finally feel itself moving.
While you were moving through the space, there was this presence you could feel.. It is somewhere here, between one step and the next, that you first feel it but cannot be seen clearly.
There is Something small. Behind you.
You turn.
Nothing. Just the light bending. You keep walking. There it is again. A shadow that is not your shadow, low to the ground, round, darting behind one of the great beings before you can catch it. When you stop, it stops. When you walk, the soft sound of it follows.
You crouch down and hold out your hand.
The shadow goes very still.
Then, shy, it slips away again, and hides, and peeks, and hides.
It will not come close. Not yet. But it does not leave, either. It wants to play. You can feel that it wants to play. It is just afraid, the way small things are afraid of big gentle things they have decided to love.
So you let it follow. You do not look at it too directly. You have a feeling that looking too hard would frighten it, and you would rather have it near and unseen than gone.
The middle of the journey is the loudest part, and the hardest to write down.
You pass through a place where the beings are many, and strange, and caught in the middle of becoming. Half one thing, half another. A shell that is also a wing. A face that is also a storm.
You do not stop for these. You could not if you tried. They are moving too fast, or you are, or both.
You have not asked a single one of them anything. Not one, this entire walk. You keep arriving at the edge of it and stepping back, and the reason keeps changing.. too large, too busy, already knows, would not answer anyway.. until you stop trusting the reasons, until you start to wonder whether they are just the shapes your cowardice knows how to take. It is not them. They have never once been unkind. They simply do not seem to need you to speak, and you have taken that as permission, and something about how easily you took it will not sit down in you.
You only catch pieces of them as you pass, the way you catch faces from a moving train. But each one leaves something in you. A small bright ache. A feeling like almost remembering your name and missing it by a breath.
The little shadow stays close through all of it. When the beings are loudest, it presses nearest. You think, maybe, the loud places frighten it too. You slow your steps so it can keep up.
You have known this creature for less than a day and you would already do a great deal to keep it from being afraid.
Funny, how that happens.
Then comes the fire.
One of them is rising, and there is flame at the root of it, and you are not afraid, which surprises you. The fire is not the kind that burns. It is the kind that wakes you. You stand close to it and you feel the stone-shape of your forgotten name grow warm in the empty place where it used to be.
You almost have it.
You almost have it.
You do not have it.
But you are closer than you were. You can feel that you are closer.
Near the end, the field grows quiet again, and noble, and still.
Two of the last beings you meet do not move at all. They have arrived at wherever it is they were going, and there is a great calm in them, the calm of something that has finished a long journey and is resting now, watching the ones who are still on their way. The third has not finished arriving. It bends low, reaching toward something small at its feet, patient in a way that has nothing to do with stillness.
One of them looks at you the way you might look at a child taking its first steps. Kind. Patient. Knowing something you do not know yet.
You want to ask it. What am I? Why did I forget? What is the word for the way you all look at me, like you have met me before?
You do not. And this time it is not fear, or not only. It is that you have finally understood the shape of the place you are in. Some answers are not given. They are walked toward.
So you stop asking, and,
You just keep walking.
The field has no edges, remember.
So there is no end to come to. There is only the next step, and the next, and the small shy shadow following close behind, hiding when you turn, never quite ready to be seen.
You still do not know your name.
But for the first time since you woke, you are sure of one thing ::
you are not walking it alone.
Before you sleep tonight, lie still. Let the day settle under you like sand settling in water.
Then, without trying to answer, ask yourself the wanderer’s question ::
What did I forget.. that is trying to wake?
Hold it. Do not chase it.
And if, in the quiet, you feel something small and shy come close.. do not turn to look at it too quickly.
Let it stay.
Āvorn :: The Ascendants
A living mythology .. an ongoing series of works that unfolds as the field wakes. Full mint mechanics :: how it works.