Stirfry Neon

I didn’t know I was feverish until the cool splash of the green swallowed me. Mist, steam or fog, will o’ whispery white surged wherever skin met splash.  I no longer recognized my surroundings. Nothing unusual there. But there were shadows masked by fog and a strange silence that echoed. Yep… you didn’t hear that and neither did I, over and over and over again, silence upon silence poured into stillness draped over depth.  Echo is a feature of volume…did you sleep through geometry?  Reverb is a feature of a different kind of volume. If that happened here, I think I’d be staring at the sons of the sea making a little heavy water rock on their tridents, conch shells and anemones. But no, what I got was silence, echoing + fog, enveloping.

Beats the heck out of hallucinations.  Or was that one coming at me now?  

The fog parted but no one walked, swam or charged through. So I took the hint. That’s what you do in my line of adventure. You take hints, rock out on the turns and hope the spins didn’t make you nauseated.

I wasn’t sure if I needed my sea or my land legs under me. The walking surface felt spongy and solid enough as I stepped through the clearing mist.  Not so dark anymore. Light filtered down from somewhere and I seemed to be in a mosaic corridor of sea glass: ice blue, black, amber, jade, cobalt blue, orange…colors too old and rare to wash up on your beach. And between the mosaics were decorated tiles, all cool to the touch.  No words, no language, but maybe a map, like a transit station octopus grid but changing…I could see something move against the wall and colors change, loops move, dolphins swim by and wink. Sea legs. Water was holding me up, holding me in here and some magic allowed me to live. I’d wonder how long it would last but I’d wasted that minute too often before. It was always just the one I needed. I wasn’t a dolphin, I wasn’t an anything, the You Are Here that meant me was a glowing swell, a wave that flexed when did, rolled when I stepped, shrunk when I stooped. Nothing on the tiles looked like a destination and the green blue blur only responded, wouldn’t leap.  So I whistled.  Everything shook but nothing shattered.

And a thin purple thread appeared, floating in front of me, a tiny teasing twist.

Thread is something I always associate with Mace. It appears in dreams about her, twisting its way through and around, weaving itself into nets, hammocks, rugs, carpets flying over minarets, blankets in front of a fire…depending on the dream setting.  Something I knew signalled I was thinking about Mace but not a symbol I ever trusted…too twisty, too easy to twirl myself into a situation that no one wanted or was prepared for. So was this a message from Mace, a trick of the water and light or an oxygen deprivation hallucination (internal rhymes bad signs; stop now).

And then I got distracted.

Music…it catches you, slips in, sneaks up, clips onto your spine, works its way up with just a little tickle and then, well then it’s in your ear, working its way down on the inside. I could feel it grip me, a horn open a brass door in my brain, a keyboard play a path through my torso and a voice, well, I’m always a sucker for a voice, female, swoony sexy and I think there might have been three of them well, they finished the journey, swivelling my center of gravity and every ounce of attention I had around 180 degrees, demanding my legs throw me their way. It wasn’t a walk, it wasn’t a run, the motion forced me suddenly away from any previous destination I might have been drifting my way towards. I went from being a sailboat on a lazy day with no wind to a powerboat not even bothering to get more than halfway wet because I was skipping over the waves so fast. I had no control over my direction or velocity, no awareness of anything but these voices that had twisted themselves into a PULL.  

I might have thought I had no sense but hearing left except that I saw them, always a little ahead, no matter how fast I was thrown, curves , crests, waves, movement…voices and colors blended and the pull was always ahead of me and the urge to get closer, move forward, be absorbed was always inside, but it couldn’t get out because I was all skin holding in this push toward the sound, this move forward, this surge.

Then something brought back touch, brought back sensation, causing the vibrations working out through my skin to recede back from the slap of a thin thread wrapping itself angrily around my neck and shoulders, pulling me down, bringing me back, cutting into my skin so the voices receded as pain worked its way in…I hit the ground, hard, it was suddenly hard, not giving and above me, the seas had started to storm.

The voices still wrapped around me, the music trying to find a way to levitate me off the ground and propel me forward while the thread was trying to drag back or pull me down. I had no control, I was just sensation being tugged inside out and in two directions.

Seasick sensation.

So I tried to spin, so that sick would happen when I was facing the ground, but the two warring forces continued to trap me. And the storm closed, dropping, causing the pressure to drop, my ears to close even further around the music driving everything else out of my awareness.

Then my ears started to tickle.

I don’t know if we’ve ever discussed this, I usually don’t, but in case I’m stuck front row oblivious at an undersea lounge act for eternity I should probably tell you a little about Mace. It’s not just the aura, or the amethyst jewel that is the only eye I ever see, or the tangle of clothes, or what’s under the layers of anti style or even that if I’m having a slow patch (I often have slow patches), she just pours me coffee, doesn’t ask questions, and doesn’t leave the bill.

None of that is the ticket. No, Mace, is wicked smart, smells trouble three miles away and does her best to fish me out when I drop into it. I can’t smell trouble until I’m two feet away and trouble has a five foot reach.

The thread was tickling my ears so much the first sound I heard over the Sirens was laughter, mine, inside my head because the thread was knitting me earmuffs, starting inside my ear canals and twisting, twining its way out, a barrier between me and the siren’s song.

Didn’t look back, just rolled to my feet, grabbed the thread and let it pull me along. Sure it banged me into a corner here and there, but it was the only hint I had and I wasn’t going to lose it.

Or let it lose me.