Viewing the sky from earth’s vantage point, it would seem as if the sun had grown angry. From down here, it was seething and spinning as if unencumbered by any law of nature. Spitting flashes of reds and yellows, of heat and light, who in turn agitated the winds from the oceans. Winds that carried tides and controlled the cycles were now too itchy. Practically slowing the current down to a halt, they fled to the solid mass of land to treat it as if it were the sea. They split their energies, casting off to cause great effect and taking shape to seep into their new scape. Some winds wished to shift tectonic plates, and to move continents. Others wanted to stir the volcanoes thought to be dormant. One wind, however, did not find comfort in this ruin. It did not contain the motivation to cause destruction as was decided out of spite for the sun.
This arm of the wind missed the simple rhythms of the sea, and the choreography of its effect. The arm yearned to again overturn rocks, to find algae on their backsides. Algae that fed the urchins and the urchins in turn, would feed their larger counterparts. This arm missed commencing a sequence, one that surpassed any imagined outcome. But the arm could never return to the sea without full power, it could never convince its siblings towards simplicity, a life of cycles. They were too irate, too power hungry, fueled by welted burns from the sun.
After reaching land, the arm further separated from the dwindling mass of winds and entered a dark and quiet structure. Bouncing off tile and stucco, its presence waned in the temperature controlled rooms. The arm had felt flashes of pure blue hues, a sign of gentle life, from outside the walls, and searched the rooms for the origin. Something to bury itself into, to hide from the other arms of the wind. Its siblings had ambitions that this wind could not even conceive. Where did they learn of terrains shaped by machines?
The sun, however, never even conceived of the generational wind or of their anger. The wind could flip the earth inside out, to bear its insides towards the ball of heat, and the sun would not spot a difference in the planet. The sun was not seething and spinning towards or for any entity nearing the wind. The sun was instead growing, and experiencing all the pains that came with it. The noted convulsions were only spurts of joyous hellos. Dry heaving breaths to collect the nearby stars, and inviting them inside the growing house “We are stronger together,” the sun would say. It would ask the stars to join them but to also hold on to themselves. “Don’t fully submit to us, as all this growth may be undone.” The stars were asked to remember where they had come from, and to count the steps from here to there. All were careful to not audibly specify this new fusion as more than a passing reunion, but it would be unlikely for any to disconnect. The stars were in uncharted waters now. Expanding to a size they had never even understood, and swallowing all the space in the darkness. “Maybe we are too big.” Unnerved whispers were heard throughout the sun, and yet no parts were willing to leave. Understandably so though, to leave this great big yellow house would be to enter the middle of nothing, and solitude was now unsettling.
Turning from the coast and lighting another, the newly enlarged sun had invited night to fall in its wake hours ago. An aged blanket had secured the sky for sleep but the ease of night was not felt by one gazelle. Encased in glass, she was preoccupied with suspending herself between life and death, aiming for the sweet spot of silence. A place that allowed for a final breath to remain firmly in her chest for hundreds of years, stopping her from turning to stone. Her legs were far better at remembering the joys of movement than experiencing them as her muscle would tear like paper now, ripping the seams of her skin with only a gentle tug. Frozen in her glass box, the days that turned to years and years to decades passed unnoticed. She had been oblivious to the growing erratic sun, and was unknowingly inviting wind towards her.
The arm of the wind, following the hues of blue now flew through the echoed halls where the glass case resided, feeling the faintest tug towards liveliness increase. A vague, almost magnetic feeling tickled the arm and it picked up speed. A flight through the lonely halls led the wind to the lonliest room of them all. Who could possibly be even a little alive in this silent room, the wind did not know. As if attached to a fishing line, it was reeled into the glass case.
And there was touch.
A breeze onto ancient skin like petrified wood.
However briefly, all the light in the world came from the spaces between them, and it was if everyone blinked while a gust of wind and an ancient gazelle were the center of all life.
The flash of light and life, for the gazelle, became a downpour of rain. Rain that whipped and rang inside her hollow throat, a rhythmic pour that trickled down into her stomach. It tickled and burned and bruised her, and she was now aware of all the rains on earth she had missed.
To the wind, the gazelle was pure relief. They had grown delirious from their faltered energy, shaking with momentary blackouts. The gazelle was an offering of stillness. This is where the arm would dwindle, a body lagging in time and touch. And so the wind then shifted the age old position of the gazelle’s back leg, gesturing from the hock of her limb to the bottom of her hoof. Although her body remained motionless, her insides warmed to spark her brain. The wind fell further into the gazelle with every movement that tore her thin skin. The convergence of their energy was reaching its peak and the wind curled up behind her eyes to watch the show. The two cemented as the gazelle was now awake without a working body. Her brain sputtered the image of the cave. A projection of her last memory onto the insides of her eyelids. Instead of replaying the events that led her to the glass case, the projection offered her a doorway. The cave was now open, and oxygen flooded the stale walls. The gazelle sauntered out into the blinding light of day, and with that, the projection died. The gazelle released her final breath in both the open scape and glass case.