Tag Archives: Fiction

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 10: Don’t Forget About Me Now, You Hear?

Posted on by Arleigh

When Kaim remember’s this particular dream-memory it brought to mind one of the many fears I think we all have as we get older. For Day 10 we see through Kaim’s eyes a remembered dream on not just the fear of being left forgotten.

“Don’t Forget About Me Now, You Hear?” delves into how age makes us yearn to leave a legacy that would make us be remembered even once we pass away. It’s really the only we become immortal. Unlike Kaim who is immortal, regular people can only rely on the memories of their dreams and deeds to be remembered by those they leave behind.

But what if we don’t have such things to leave behind as a legacy? Are we still remembered by those we love? Or do we become forgotten and left by the wayside?

This is a fear I’ve always contemplated. Have I done enough and experienced life to the fullest to be remembered by those around me or am I consigned to oblivion.

The dream-memory does end on a hopeful note that no matter how we may feel about the worth of our legacy when it’s our time to go there’s a good chance there will always be someone to remember us and in the end all that’s needed is for one to remember to allow us to live forever.

Don’t Forget About Me Now, You Hear?

“Brother dear!”

The cry comes from someone behind as he wades through the post town’s crowds. At first Kaim does not realize that the person is addressing him, and he walks on in search of lodging for the night.

But the cry comes again, all but clinging to him, “Brother, dear! Big Brother!”

This is puzzling.

He last visited the town eighty years ago. There can’t be anyone here who knows him.
“Wait, Big Brother! Don’t go!”

His puzzlement begins to take on an eerie edge, for the voice addressing him as “Big Brother” can only belong to an old woman.

Without letting his guard down, he turns around slowly.
Just as he thought—it is an old woman.

Dressed in the clothes of a young girl, the tiny old woman is looking straight at Kaim with a bright smile on her face.

“I think you may have the wrong person,” he says, allowing his discomfort to show.

“No I don’t,” She says with a big shake of the head and an expanding smile. “You’re Big Brother Kaim!”

“What…?”
“What’s wrong, Kaim, did you forget me?”

“Uh… well… I mean…”

He can’t place her. Even if he were to succeed in doing so, he knows he has no acquaintances in this town. He wonders . . . could this be a chance re-encounter with someone he once met on the road? But no, he is sure he doesn’t recognize her, and strangest of all, why would this woman who looks old enough to be his grandmother address him as “Big Brother”?
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am Kaim! You’re so mean!”

She yells at him loudly enough that people in the crowd stop and stare at them.

It is not just the fact that she is shouting, of course, People always have to shout to be heard in these crowded streets. That alone would not attract attention. The old woman’s voice is different from a normal adult yell. It is like the innocent, unrestrained cry of a little girl who throws her whole body into her scream.

People turn shocked expressions on the old woman and quickly avert their eyes.

Their dismay is understandable. The old woman has her stark white hair up tied up with a colourful ribbon, and her dress has the same floral pattern and floppy sleeves as a little girl’s.

Many of the passerby look at the old woman with a mix of sympathy and pity on their faces.

Gradually, Kaim begins to comprehend the situation. This old woman has simply lived too long. This is why the past, locked away in her memory, has become realer to her then the reality before her eyes.
A middle-aged passerby tugs on Kaim’s elbow.

“If I were you I would just walk away. Don’t get involved with her. She’ll be nothing but trouble.”

“It’s true.” says the wife by his side, nodding. You’re a stranger here, so you don’t know, but this old woman is senile. You can ignore her. She’ll forget everything in five minutes.”

They may be right, but the fact remains is this old woman knows Kaim’s name.

In the little girl part of her mind, she thinks of Kaim as her “Big Brother.”
He tries probing his distant memories.

He spent no more than a few days here so long ago. He got to know very few people, and there can’t be any of those left who still remember him.

When Kaim goes on standing before the old woman, the nosy middle age couple becomes indignant. “You try to be helpful and what does it get you?” snorts the husband.

“Let them work it out themselves.” adds the wife. “Let’s just go.” Which they proceed to do.

Winding up the voice for maximum shrillness, the old woman calls out to them as they walk off in a huff. “Don’t forget me now, you hear?”

In that instant, Kaim’s memory makes the connection.

The old woman greets his look of recognition with an expression of joy.

“Do you remember me now?” she cries. “I’m Shushu. It’s me—Shushu!”

He does remember her. A little girl he met in this town eighty years ago.

Perhaps five or six years old at the time, she was a precocious little thing whose lack of shyness with strangers came from her being the daughter of the innkeeper.

Somewhere along the way, she had probably picked up a phrase she heard someone using and so whenever a guest would depart after a number of days at the inn, instead of the standard “Goodbye” or “Thank you” she would see the person off with a smile and a cheery “Don’t forget me now, you hear?”
Only now is he suddenly able to see the girl beneath the wrinkles, Kaim must avert his gaze from the old woman’s face.

“What’s wrong Big brother?”

He cannot bring himself to look directly at Shushu’s vacant stare.

Eighty year have gone by! What can they talk about when a man who never ages meets a little girl from the distant past who has aged too much?
“Let me through here, please. Sorry, let me through here, please.”

Forcing his way through the crowd, a young man rushes up to where Shushu and Kaim are standing. “Great-grandmother! How often do I have to ask you not to go out without telling me?”

After scolding the old woman, he turns to Kaim with an apologetic bow

“I’m terribly sorry if she’s been a bother to you. She’s old and getting senile. I hope you can forgive her.”
Shushu herself, however, angrily purses her lips and demands to know, “What are you talking about? I’m just playing with Big Brother Kaim, What’s wrong with that?

She peers at the young man and asks, “Who are you?”

The young man turns a sad gaze on Kaim and begins to apologize again.

With a pained smile, Kaim stops him.

Kaim knows that, at times, it can be sadder and more heartbreaking for a life to be prolonged than for it to be cut short. Sad and heartbreaking through a life may be, however, no one has the right to trample on it.
“She just can’t seem to get it through her head she’s old.” Even if I hold a mirror up to her she asks, “Who’s that old lady?” The young man, whose name is Khasche, further explains the situation to Kaim, “she might forget that she ate breakfast, but her memories from childhood can be clear as a bell.”

Kaim nods in silent understanding.

Khasche and Kaim sit on a bench in the town plaza, watching Shushu pick flowers.

She is apparently making a floral wreath for her long-lost “Big Brother.”
“But really sir, do you have time for this? Weren’t you in a hurry to get somewhere? ”

“No, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Thanks very much.”

He smiles for the first time and says, “I haven’t seen her this happy in ages.”

The young man seems convinced that his great-grandmother has encountered in Kaim a person who resembles someone she knew as a child. Kaim allows him this. He knows that Khasche cannot, and need not, imagine the existence of a person who never ages.

“Her health has really deteriorated lately. Whenever she runs a fever, we wonder if this is going to be the end for her and we prepare for the worst. But then she springs right back. Sometimes we joke that her mind is so far gone, she’s forgotten to die.”

Kaim sees the young man in profile, Khasche has a gentle smile on his face as he speaks of his great-grandmother. No doubt, when he was little, she used to hold him and play with him. Grown up now, Khasche watches over his Great-grandmother like a parent watching his own child.

He calls out to her, “That’s nice, Great-Grandmother. I haven’t seen you weave flowers together like that for a long time!”
Squatting in the grass with a fistful of flowers, Shushu answers, “That’s not true. I made a wreath for him yesterday!”

Then she says to Kaim, “isn’t that right, Big Brother? You wore it in your hair for me didn’t you?”

Kaim cups his hands around his mouth and calls back to her, “I certainly did, it smelt so nice!”

Shushu’s face became as mass of joyful wrinkles. Overcome with emotion, Khasche bows his head.

Kaim asks Khasche, “are you the one who takes care of her?”

“Uh-huh. Me and my wife Cynthia.”

“How about your parents? Or even your grandparents? Are they still living?”

Khasche shrugs and says, “I’m the only other member of my family left alive.”
His grandparents both died in an epidemic twenty years ago.

His father lost his life in the war that enveloped this area ten years ago.

His mother, Shushu’s granddaughter, aged more rapidly than her own mother, and the lamp of her life was snuffled out five years ago.

“So my great-grandmother has had to keep holding funeral over the years-for her Children and grandchildren, Before we even noticed, she had become the oldest person in town. It must be lonely living that way…”

“I’m sure.” answers Kaim.

“It might even be a kindness of the gods to let people fade out of mentally when they’ve lived too long. At least that’s how I’ve come to see it lately. You would think she would feel lonely to be left behind that way, but she’s not lonely at all. To live long means you have a lot of memories. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to live in the world of you memories during the last days for your life.”
Shushu stands up, her arms filled with flowers.

“Big Brother Kaim! I’m going to make a floral wreath for you right now! And if I have any flowers left over, I’ll make one for this other person too.”

Kaim and Khasche look at each other with bewildered smiles.

Why are you smiling like that? Shushu asks. “Are you two friends now?”

She opens her wrinkle-ringed eyes wide in surprise and gives the two men a joyful smile, and collapses into the grass.
Khasche starts to run for a doctor but Kaim grabs his arm and holds him back, saying, “You’d better stay with her.”

Ironically, Kaim, who can never truly know what it feels like to age, has been present, for that very reason, at countless deaths over the years.

His experience tells him that Shushu will not recover this time.
Shushu is lying on her back where she has fallen, her armload of flowers now spread over her chest.

Her face wear’s a smile.

“Wait just a minute, Big Brother Kaim. I’ll make your wreath for you right away. . .”

Her mind is still lingering among her memories of the past.

Will she stay like this to the very end?

 

“Keep fighting Great-Grandmother! Don’t let go!”

Khasche clings to her hand, tearfully shouting encouragement, but she may not even realize that this is her own great-grandson.
“It’s me, Great-grandmother, it’s me, Khasche! You haven’t forgotten me, have you? I bathed you last night, you knew who I was then, didn’t you?”

Khasche appeals to her with all his might.

But Shushu, a girlish smile on her lips, is departing for that distance world.
I’m going to be a father soon, Great-grandmother! Remember? I told you last night. Cynthia has a baby inside. It’s going to make you a Great-great-grandmother! Our Family is going to grow—another person with your flesh and blood.”

Still smiling, Shushu grasps one of the flowers on her chest in her trembling fingers.

She thrusts it towards Khasche and in a voice no more than a whisper, she says, “Don’t forget me now, you hear?”
Khasche doesn’t understand.

Indeed how could her know the little phrase she always used to speak Long before he was born?

Kaim puts his arm around Khasche’s shoulder and says “Answer her.”

“I know what you mean Great-grandmother. I won’t forget you. I will absolutely never forget you. How could I forget my own Great grandmother?”

“Don’t forget me now, you hear?”

“I won’t forget you, Great-grandmother. Believe me. I’ll always remember you.”

“Don’t forget me now, you hear?”
Shushu closes her eyes and lays her hand on the flowers on her chest as if groping there for something. She seems to be trying to open the door where the memories are sealed.

A soft breeze moves over her.

The flowers adorning her chest dance in the wind along with the memories. Surely among those memories is the Kaim of eighty years ago.
Kaim snatches at one of the petals dancing in the wind, enclosing it in the palm of his hand.

Shushu will never open her eyes again.

She has left on a journey to a world where there is no past or present.

The only ones she has left behind are Kaim, who will go on living forever, and Khasche, who is about to welcome a new life into the world.
Clinging to her corpse, Khasche raises his tear stained face to look at Kaim.

“Thank you so much.” He says to Kaim the traveler. “Thanks to you, my Great-grandmother was so happy to be picking flowers at the very end.

“No. It wasn’t thanks to me,” Kaim says.

He closes his fist on the petal in his hand and says to Khasche. “I’m sure if she had made a wreath, she would have given it to your sweet new baby.”

Khasche shyly cocks his head and mutters, “I hope you’re right.” But then smiling through his tears, he declares. “I’m sure you are.”
“About that promise you made to her—be good and don’t forget her.”

“No, of course not.”

“People go on living as long as they remain in someones memory.” With these words, Kaim begins to walk slowly away. Behind him he hears Shushu’s voice.

Don’t forget me now, you hear?

It is the voice of the little girl from eighty years ago, ringing ever clear, sweet, and innocent, declaring farewell to the man who will travel life forever

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 08: They Live in Shells

Posted on by Arleigh

For Day 8 we have Kaim’s dream-memory of hope in the face of an ever encroaching hopelessness. In this dream he remembers his time in the total darkness of a prison cell where no light ever comes shining through. How such a fate means a slower death but only after one’s spirit and mind breaks completely.

“The Live in Shells” reminded me a lot of Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption. It spoke of the need for someone to hold onto hope to keep oneself sane in the dehumanizing and mindbreaking confines of a prison. While this dream didn’t explore the more intimate side of human emotions and behavior it does explore the concept of the dual-nature of ideas. For this dream the example would be darkness itself. We see how darkness can become a way to destroy another’s mind and spirit. On the other hand, darkness could also become the ultimate escape from the horrors of the world around us. Darkness becoming the symbol for that final sleep.

This wasn’t one of the better dream-memory of the 33 that will be explored, but it does bring forth some interesting ideas and concepts.

They Live in Shells

“Stop this! Please, I beg of you! Let me go!”

A young man’s screams echo through the emptiness.

No voice answers him.

Crouching in the darkness, Kaim counts the footsteps. Three men have come in. The disorderly footsteps probably belong to the young man. The other two are perfectly regular.

“Please, I’m begging you. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you all you could ask for on the outside. I promise. I won’t forget to show my thanks to you. Please!”

The only reply of the two men who have brought the young one here is the clunk of an iron lock opening.

“No! No! Please, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything you want. Anything!”

A dull thud is the sound of flesh tearing, bone wrenching. Someone collapses on the floor. A strangled scream. The clunk of an iron lock closing.

Kaim knows the young man has been thrown into the shell diagonally opposite his own. When you are locked into one of these windowless shells, your hearing becomes acutely sensitive.

“Don’t do this! Let me out of here! Please! Let me out of here!”

From the sound of the voice, Kaim can imagine a young man’s face with boyish traces: a small-time hoodlum hardly a step above a teenage gang member. When he was still on the streets, no doubt, he used to swagger down the sidewalk, his cunning but cowardly eyes darting every which way.

The two men who brought him here maintain their silence to the end, their footsteps moving off together. The heavy door opens and closes again.

Left alone in the darkness, the young man howls his entreaties for a time, but when her realizes they will do no good, he shouts himself hoarse, spitting out one curse after another until he begins to sob.

“Quiet down there,” an old man calls out from one of the inner shells, “It won’t do you any good to make a fuss, Time to give up, sonny.”

This is the voice of the oldest man living in the dozen or so shells lined up in the darkness.

He was already here when Kaim was sent to this place. It is always his role to quiet and comfort the obstreperous newcomers.

“If you’ve got time to bawl like that, keep your eyes closed!”

“Huh?”

“Just make sure you keep sucking on your memories of the outside-like a piece of candy!”

Sounds of suppressed laugher come from the surrounding shells.

Kaim joins in with a smile and a sigh

All the shells in the dark are supposedly full, but few of their inhabitants are laughing.

Most of them have lost the strength to laugh.

“Hey, sonny.” the old man continues in his role as adviser to the newcomer, “No point making a fuss. Just calm down and accept your fate. Otherwise…” and here a note of intensity enters the old man’s voice, “they’ll just drag you out of here feet first.”

This is exactly what happened yesterday to the former inhabitant of the young man’s shell.

He had been screaming on and off for a day. Then came a day of banging his head against the shell wall. Then nothing… until he was dragged out in silence.

“So get a hold of yourself, sonny. Don’t let the darkness swallow you up. Close your eyes and imagine nice scenery from the outside, the bigger the better: the ocean, or the sky, or some huge field of grass. Remember! Imagine! that’s the only way to survive this place.”

This was the advice he always gave to the newcomers.

But the young man screamed tearfully.

“Who the hell do you think you’re kidding? Survive this place? And then what? I know what this place is. ‘No exit’ prison! They throw the lifers in here, give them just enough food to keep them alive, and in the end they kick the bucket anyway—Am I right? There’s nothing left to hope for.”

His shouts turn to sobs again.

This is the reaction of most of the newcomers.

Nor are they mistaken. This is a prison. Each of the “shells” is a solitary cell with bars, and the sun shines on a prisoner only on the day of his funeral…

“Everybody dies, sonny, that’s for sure. You just cant let your mind go before your body does. Hope doesn’t have to fade unless you throw it out yourself,” the old man goes on softly.

Then he adds with feeling, “This system we live under can’t last much longer, either.”

The old man is a political prisoner. As leader of the anti-government faction, he long resisted the dictatorship until he finally lost the struggle and was imprisoned.

The young man has no ears for the old man’s words, however, he continues thrashing on the floor and crying.

This fellow won’t be in his shell much longer than his predecessor. In a few days, or in less than a month at best, he will go to pieces.

The darkness is that powerful. Depriving a prisoner of light is far crueler than taking his life in an instant.

“My my,” the old man reflects, “This fellow’s not going to do us much good in a prison break.”

The old revolutionary laughs, it might be a genuine laugh of a bold front, but in any case almost no one laughs in response.

Tomorrow morning- or rather, since there is no clear-cut “morning” in the darkness- after they go to sleep, wake up and have their next meal, another cold corpse will be dragged out wordlessly from another shell.

“Hey, listen. How many of us are here now?” the old revolutionary asks. “Answer if you can hear me!”

“I can hear you,” Kaim says.

His is the only voice.

“Man, this is bad, we were full up a little while ago.”

The old man gives a dry chuckle.

Kaim asks, I wonder if something’s happened out there.”

“Maybe so,” answers the old revolutionary.

“If you ask me, this would be about the right time for a coup d’etat or a revolution.”

“My ‘boys’ aren’t going to keep quiet much longer…”

“Uh, what was your name again? Kaim? Have you noticed what’s happening? How there used to be a lot more guys getting thrown in here until a little while ago, and most of them real nobodies, not worth sentencing to life?”

“Uh-huh, sure…”

The young man was one of them- nothing but a small-time crook. It just so happened that the storehouse he broke into belonged to a rich man with ties to a powerful politician. this was the only reason they put him in a shell.

“The shells always used to be full. They would throw a bunch of men in here and they would die, then the new men would come, and they would die…”

The young man was one of those, the terror of being enveloped in darkness was too much for him, and he went to pieces. He was apparently having hallucinations at the end: “I’m coming Mama, I’m coming. Wait for me, please, Mama…” he repeated over and over like a child. “Where are you, Mama? Here? Are you here?” and he gouged his own eyes out with his bare hands.

“I figured things were getting scary out there—the cops losing control—so the government was really starting to crack down- which is why these shells were always full.”

This is what brought the young man here. Blood streaming from his eye sockets, he died muttering in snatches, “What did I do? Everybody knows damn well… there are plenty of men way worse than me…”

“But now the place is empty. Do you know what that means, Kaim?”

“Sure. There’s so much crime out there now that the government can’t suppress it.”

“You got it; the whole royal family might be strung up by now for all we know. Its a revolution. It will happen any day now! That means you and I will get out of here. My boys will come and get us. Just hang in there a little while longer.”

Kaim nods in silence. The old revolutionary goes on, “Your strong, Kaim. Not many guys could stay as calm as you, thrown into a shell and enveloped in darkness like this.”

Not even Kaim can explain it. It is true that he was strangely calm when they put him in the shell. The darkness was something he seemed to recognize as a distant memory. In the distant past, he, too, may have tasted the anguish of the other shell inhabitants so tortured by the fear of being sealed in darkness.

“How are you so tough mentally, Kaim? Does it mean you, too, are a revolutionary?”

“No, not me…”

His crime is hardly worth talking about. He resisted somewhat under questioning when they brought him in as a suspect, and for that he was branded a rebel and thrown into a shell. The old man is probably right, though. The country’s dictatorship is almost certainly in its last days.

“It won’t be long now. We’ll be back in the real world before we know it. I have hope right in here, and it will stay here until I abandon it myself,” the old revolutionary mutters as if trying to convince himself.

The prison falls soon afterward. Armed young men come charging into the darkness and open the shells’ barred doors.

Embraced by his “boys”, the old revolutionary goes out.

“Wait,” Kaim cries, trying to hold him back.

But he is too late. Anxious to see the new world following the destruction of the old system, the old revolutionary steps outside and opens his eyes.

It is evening.

Though the sun is nearly down, its light is still strong enough to burn eyes accustomed to total darkness.

The old revolutionary presses his hands to his eyes. And with a groan, crumples to his knees.

Kaim has saved himself by shielding his eyes with his arm.

Not even he knows what caused him to do this. Could distant memories have taught him that the truly frightening thing about punishment by darkness is what happens after the release from prison?

When could I have been imprisoned, and where? More important, how long have I been on this endless journey?

With bleeding eyes, surrounded on the ground by his boys, the old revolutionary searches for Kaim.

“I came all this way, Kaim, only to make one terrible mistake at the bitter end. My eyes are probably useless now.”

This is precisely why he asks Kaim for one last favor.

“Tell me Kaim, what is the outside world like? Has the revolution succeeded? Are the people happy? Are they smiling joyfully?”

Kaim opens his eyes slowly, and just barely, beneath the shade of his hand.

As far as he can see, the ground is covered in bodies. The corpses of royal troops and revolutionary troops are heaped on one another, and countless civilians are dead. A mother lies dead with her small child in her arms, the bloody corpse of the child’s father next to them, arms outstretched in a vain attempt to shield them.

“Tell me what you see, Kaim.”

Kaim fights back a sigh and says, “You must work from now on to build a happy society.”

The old revolutionary senses the truth.

“I won’t abandon hope, Kaim, no matter what.”

As if to say, “I know that,” Kaim nods and begins to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know…someplace.”

“Why don’t you stay here and build a new world with us? You of all people can do that, I know.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’ll be moving on just the same.”

The old revolutionary does not try anymore to hold Kaim back. Instead, as a parting gift, he repeats for Kaim the words he spoke so often in his shell.

“There will always be hope, wherever you are, until you yourself abandon it. Never forget that!”

Kaim walks on.

His eyes chance to light on the body of a young boy lying at his feet. The boy breathed his last with eyes wide open in fear.

Kaim kneels and gently closes the boy’s eyelids.

He knows deep down, in a memory too far away for even him to reach, that while darkness can be a great source of terror, it can also bring deep and lasting peace.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 07: The Upstreamers

Posted on by Arleigh

For Day 7 of our 33-Day marathon of Kaim’s dream-memories we have “The Upstreamers”.

This time we see how Kaim’s remembered memory of a unique group of people gives us an insight on the nature of faith and belief. Not religion in the feed the masses kind, but faith and belief in a way of life that enriches one’s life and experiences even if it may look foolish and confounding to those who don’t believe. These so-called “upstreamers” choose to follow a faith which simplifies their life and gives them a goal to reach. Whether they reach this goal in their journey is beside the point. The journey itself becomes the important thing for these individuals.

I say that for many they’ve lost sight of what they truly believe in and replaced it with ready-made and tailor-made ideas and beliefs but none of the wisdom required. They’ve looked at the sacrifices needed to truly follow what they originally believe in because such beliefs require too high a price they’re not willing to make.

This particular dream-memory doesn’t tug at the heart-strings but does bring up interesting questions and themes on the nature of faith and belief. It shines a light on why people who give their life over to such ideas, make the required sacrifices and follow it through to the end because the short lifespan of humans becomes an impetus to try and reach that goal. A goal that in the end may be unreachable, but which enriches those who partake on the journey with experiences that’s purely the traveler’s and not thrust upon them by those who think they know best.

The Upstreamers

Strong winds have always blown across this vast grassy plain.

Perhaps the area’s topography has something to do with it, but the direction of the wind remains constant, irrespective of the time or season:

From east to west, from the horizon where the sun rises to the horizon where the sun sets. Swept by the unceasing winds, the misshapen trunks and branches of shrubs all incline to the west. Tall grasses do not grow here, and the grasses that do grow all lie flat on the ground, bending westward.

Caravans and herding folk traverse the single road that crosses the plain. They do not “come and go,” they only go, moving from east to west, using the wind at their backs to gain distance. Travelers heading west to east always use the circuitous route that snakes around the southern mountains. It is much farther that way, but much faster than crossing the plain head-on into the wind. The road across the plain is called the Wind Stream. Just as the flow of a great river never changes direction, the footsteps of those who use the road have not changed direction since the distant past, nor are they likely to change far into the future: from east to west.

Human shapes that appear from the horizon where the sun rises disappear over the horizon where the sun sets.

They never pass oncoming travelers—with only the rarest exceptions. The first time she passed Kaim on the Wind Stream, the girls was just an infant.

“So, my grandmother was alive then?”

In response to the girl’s untroubled question, Kaim smiles and answers,

“She was. And I remember what a nice old lady she was, too.”

Looking back down the road, the girl points toward the line of hills fading off into the distance.

“My grandmother crossed seven hills on her journey.” “Is seven a lot?”

“Uh-huh. Grandma lived a long time. Most people end their journeys after five hills. The people they leave behind build a little grave where they ended their journey, and then they keep traveling…”

The girl points down at the ground where she is standing.

“This is as far as I’ve come,” she says with a proud, happy smile.

The religion of the girl and her family professes a pious believe that if they devote their lives to walking eastward, against the flow of the Wind Stream, they will arrive at the easternmost source of the Stream itself. People call believers in that religion, “The Upstreamers.”

The word carries a hint of fear and sadness, but also a trace of contempt and scorn.

The Upstreamers are devoid of worldly desires. They live their lives for no greater purpose than traveling eastward on foot. They are free of doubt. They give birth to children en route, and they continue their journey while raising their children. When they age and their strength gives out, their journey ends. But their family’s journey continues.

From child to grandchild to great-grandchild, their belief is carried on. The journey of this girl’s family was begun by her late grandmother, who began walking from the Wind Stream’s western verge with her son, who was then the age the girl is now.

The Upstreamers do not walk for the entire year, of course. During the season when the winds are especially strong—from the late autumn to early spring—they take up residence in various post towns scattered along the road and earn day wages by performing tasks that the townsfolk themselves refuse to do. Some Upstreamers choose to stay in the towns, while others, conversely, take townspeople with them when they return to the road in the spring.

These are people who have fallen in love during the long winter,

Or boys who dream of travel,

or grown-ups who have tired of town life. Such are the reasons the townsfolk look upon the Upstreamers with complicated gazes.

The little girl’s mother was one of those who joined the journey mid-way, and he girl herself, some years from now, might fall in love with someone in a post town somewhere. She might choose to live in the town, or she could just as well invite her lover to join her on the road.

She has no idea at this point what lies in store for her. The girl’s father calls out to her: “Time to go!”

Their brief rest is over.

She seems sorry to leave and stands up reluctantly. “Too bad,” she says. “I wish I could have talked to you more. But we have to get to the next town by the time the snows start.”

Constantly exposed to upwinds, her cheeks are red and cracked, her lips chapped, but her smile is wonderful a she wishes Kaim a safe journey.

It is the serene smile of one who believes completely in the purpose of her life, without the slightest doubt. “Will I see you again somewhere?” she asks.

“Probably.”

Kaim answers, smiling back at her, but he can never match that smile of hers. He is now in the midst of a journey that will take him beyond the western end of the Wind Stream. He heads to the battlefield as a mercenary, and by the time the western battle is over, a new battle will have begun in the east.

It will be a long, cruel journey, with nothing to believe in. When he meets he girl again along he way, Kaim’s smile will have taken on even more shadows than it has now. Perhaps as a parting gift for him, the girl sings a few short lines for him:

This wind, where does it blow from?

Where does it start its journey here?

Does it come from where life begins?

Or does it begin where life ends?

“Goodbye, then,” the girl says, trudging on, one labored step at a time, hair streaming in the headwind.

 
Ten long years have flowed by when Kaim next meets the girl.

 
It is spring, when the grassland is dotted with lovely white flowers.

She has become the wife of a young man who does tailoring and shoe repair in one of the post towns.

“This is my third spring here,” she says, patting her swollen belly fondly.

In a few days, she will give birth to a child. She will become a mother.

“And your parents…?” Kaim asks.

She shrugs and glances eastward.

“They are continuing their journey. I’m the only one who stayed on here.” Kaim does not ask why she has done this.

Continuing he journey is one way to live, and staying in a town is another.

Neither can be judged to be more correct than the other. The only answer for the girl can be seen in her smiling face. “But never mind about me,” she says looking at him suspiciously.

“You haven’t changed one little bit from the time we met so long ago.”

For the thousand-year-old Kaim, ten years is nothing but a change in season.

“Some lives are like that,” he says, straining to smile.

“Some people in this world can never grow old, no matter how long they live.”

He looks at the girl, now grown into a woman, and wonders again, ‘Living through endless ages of time: is it a blessing, or a curse?’ Kaim’s remark hardly counts as an explanation, but the girl nods with a look of apparent understanding.

“If that’s the case,” she says, “You should be the one who goes to the place where the wind begins. You’d be the perfect Upstreamer.”

She could be right: after all, the lifespan given to humans is far too short for anyone to travel against the Wind Stream as far as the starting point of the wind. Still, Kaim responds with a few slow shakes of his head.

“I’m not qualified to make the journey.”

“No? Anybody can be an Upstreamer. Anybody, that is, who wants to see where the wind starts with his or her own eyes.”

Having said this, however, the girl adds with a touch of sadness, “No one has actually seen it, though, I guess.” The place where the wind begins: that place is nowhere at all. Even if, after a long journey, one were to arrive at the eastern end of the Wind Stream, the wind would be blowing there, too. And not just an east wind. West wind, north wind, south wind: winds without limit, without end.

Human beings, who cannot live forever, daring to take a journey without end. This might be the ultimate tragedy, but it could just as well be the ultimate comedy. Kaim knows one thing, however: one cannot simply dismiss it as an exercise in futility. “How about you?” he asks the girl. “Aren’t you going to continue your journey soon?”

She thinks about this for the space of a breath, and caressing her swollen belly, she cocks her head and says, “I wonder… I might want to go on living the way I am now forever. Or then again, I might feel that desire to reach the starting point of the wind.” All the Upstreamers without exception say that you can never know what might trigger a return to the journey. One day, without warning, you slough off the entire town life and start walking.

It is not always a matter of running into an Upstreamer and being lured back to the road: plenty of people set out on their own all of a sudden.

The teachings of the Upstreamers say that all human beings harbor a desire for endless travel. They probably are not aware of the desire because it is stashed away so far down in the breast that it is deeper than memory.

The instant something brings it to the surface, a person becomes and Upstreamer. “Even if you have the desire,” the girl says to Kaim.

“I wonder…”

“It’s true,” she says. “No question.”

The look in her eyes is as straight-on and free of doubt as it was the last time he met her.

Fixing him with that look, she points to her own chest.

“I haven’t completely lost it myself.”

“But I’m sure you’re happy with your present life?”

“Of course I am.”

“Do you really think the day will come when you will want to set out on the journey even if it means giving up that happiness?”

Instead of answering, she gives him a gentle smile. Many years flow by, but every now and then, something reminds Kaim of the girl’s words—that everyone harbors a desire for endless travel.

For Kaim, living itself is a journey without end.

In the course of his journey, he has witnessed countless deaths, and he has also witnessed countless births. Human life is all too short, too weak, and fleeting.

Yet, the more he dwells upon its evanescence, the more he feels, inexplicably, that words such as “eternal,” and “perpetual” apply more properly to life, finite as it is, than to anything else. Traveling down the Wind Stream for the first time in many years, Kaim spies the funeral of an Upstreamer.

A boy in mourning dress stands by the road holding out wildflowers to passing travelers, and urging them to “offer up a flower to a noble soul who has made the long journey this far.”

Kaim takes a flower and asks the boy, “Is it a member of your family?”

“Uh-huh. My grandma.”

The boy nods, his face the image of one Kaim knew so long ago.
The old woman lying in the coffin must be the girl. Kaim is sure of it.
“Grandma traveled a long, long time. She brought my daddy with her when he was just a little boy. See that hill over there? She started walking from way, way beyond it, and she got all the way here.”

So, the girl must’ve set out on her journey after all.

Turning her back on the town life, leading her child by the hand, she trod her way along the endless journey.

Her wish to aim for the place where the wind begins would be passed on to her child, her grandchild, and on through the succeeding generations.

To head for a land one could never hope to reach, and to do so generation after generation: this is another endless journey. Is it a tragedy?

A comedy?

Perhaps the serene smile on the face of the old woman in the coffin is the answer.

Kaim lays he flower at her feet as an offering.

The family members who have traveled with her join together in a song for the departed:

This wind, where does it blow from?

Where does it start its journey here?

Does it come from where life begins?

Or does it begin where life ends?

The wind blows.

It sweeps the vast grassland.

Kaim takes one long, slow step toward his destination.

“Have a good trip!” calls the boy.

Red and cracked as the girl’s were so long ago, his cheeks soften in a smile as he waves to the departing traveler.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 06: Little Liar

Posted on by Arleigh

Another day and another dream-memory recovered by our eternal warrior Kaim. This time around he begins to remember the long-lost memory of a little girl he once met during his travels through one of the uncounted towns in his journey. It’s this encounter with this little girl which gives this Day 6 dream-memory of Kaim’s quite an appropriate title of “Little Liar”.

She definitely was a little liar as Kaim begins to remember. But while that moniker sound like a condemnation, the way Kaim remembers it was quite different. Going over this dream-memory reminded me of how even when I was a young one I would sometimes lie to get attention just for the sake of getting said attention. Children seem to retreat to using their imagination as a form of defense mechanism when they want to put a rosy outlook on the miseries of their current, young life.

While the “little liar” in this dream-memory seems to have taken things to the extreme it’s not too hard to feel some sympathies for her and what she has resorted to doing to keep herself from spiraling into total despair. The end of the dream has tinges of both sadness and hope. How one decides to look at the final fate of the “little liar” will depend on whether one was the sort who sympathized with her or who grew weary of the little girl.

Little Liar

Everyone in the marketplace hates the little girl.

Not yet ten years old, and far from having outgrown the sweet innocence of childhood, she earns only open contempt from the grownups who have shops in the market.

The reason is simple.

She lies about everything.

“Hey, mister, I just saw a burglar go into your house!”

“Look, lady, everything just fell off your shelves!”

“Hey, everybody, did you hear what the traveler said? Bandits are planning to attack this market!”

Even the most harmless white lies can be annoying if repeated often enough, and the shopkeepers have found themselves growing angry.

“You better watch out for her, too,” the lady greengrocer warns Kaim.

“Nobody here falls for her lies anymore, so she’s always on the lookout for newcomers or strangers. Somebody like you would be a perfect target for her.”

She could be right.

Kaim is new to the town. He arrived a few days ago and has just started working in the marketplace today.

“What do her parents do?” Kaim asks while unloading a cartful of vegetables.

The woman frowns and shakes her head with a sigh.

“She doesn’t have any.”

“They died?”

“The mother did, at least. Maybe four or five years ago. She was a healthy young woman who never so much as caught a cold in her life, then one day she collapsed, and that was it for her.”

“How about the father?”

She sighs more deeply than before and says, “He left to find a job in the city.”

The parents used to operate a variety store in the market, though the mother almost single-handedly took care of the actual buying and selling of the many goods they carried.

As soon as she died, the shop’s fortunes took a plunge, until it was eventually taken over by someone else. The father went off to the distant capital city in search of a good- paying job that would enable him to cover their debts.

He promised to come back in six months, but he has been gone a whole year now. Letters used to arrive from him on occasion care of his friend the tailor, but those, too, gave out about six months ago.

“I guess you could say it’s sad for such a little girl to be waiting around for her father to come home, but still…”

The girl now sleeps in a corner of the communal storehouse run by the people of the marketplace.

“We all used to talk about taking care of her- to be stand-in parents for her until her father comes back.”

This is no surprise to Kaim. He knows from his own experience that all the people who work in the marketplace—and not just this plump, kindly woman—are good hearted and generous despite their limited means. Otherwise, they never would have hired a stranger like himself.

“But long before that first six months went by, we were all heartily sick of her. She was a sweet, simple girl while her mother was alive, but this experience has left her kind of twisted.

All her sweetness is gone.

Of course we all feel sorry for her, and we take our turns feeding her and dressing her in hand-me-downs, but the way she keeps telling lies to all the grownups, nobody really cares about her anymore.

Why can’t she see that…?”

“She must be lonely, don’t you think?”

With a pained smile, the woman shrugs and says,

“That’s enough gabbing for one day. Work, work!” and she goes back inside the shop.

Kaim is sorting the vegetables he has unloaded in front of the shop when he hears a little voice behind him.

“Hi, mister, you new here?”

It’s the girl.

“Uh-huh…”

“You’re not from the town, are you?”

“No, I’m not…”

“Are you living upstairs while you work here?”

“For a while, at least. That’s what I’m hoping to do.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, okay?”

It’s starting already, “Okay,” Kaim says without pausing in his work.

“There’s a ghost in this marketplace. The people here don’t tell anybody about it because it’s bad for business, but it’s really here. I see it all the time.”

“Really?!” Kaim responds with a feigned surprise.

He decides to play along with her rather than scold her for lying.

In this endlessly long life of his, he has encountered any number of children who have lost their parents or been abandoned by them.

The sadness and loneliness of children who have been cast into the wide world alone exactly what Kaim feels himself as he continues to wander throughout the infinite flow of time.

“What kind of ghost?”

“A woman. And I know who she is.”

“It’s the ghost of a mother who lost her child,” she says.

Her little girl—her only child—died in an epidemic.

Overcome with grief, the mother chose to die, and now her ghost appears in the market every night, searching for her daughter.

“The poor mother! She killed herself so she could be with her daughter, but she can’t find her in the other world, either. So she keeps looking for her and calling out, Where are you? Hurry and come with Mommy to the other world.”

The girl tells her story with deadly seriousness.

“Don’t you think it’s sad?” she asks Kaim. She actually has tears in her eyes—which is precisely why Kaim knows she is lying.

Even if he had not been warned by the woman, he would know this was a lie based on what she told him about the girl’s background.

Kaim carefully arranges bunches of well-ripened grapes in a display crate and asks the girl,

“Why do you think the mother can’t find her daughter?”

“What?”

The girl asks him with a dazed stare.

“Well,” he explains, “the girl is not in the other world, and she’s not wandering around in this world, so where is she?”

Kaim does not mean this to be a cross-examination.

He simply feels that someone who lies out of sorrow can have a far easier time of it by recognizing the lie for what it is. The loneliness of a girl who has lost her mother and been abandoned by her father consists not in telling on little lie but in having to keep on lying.

“Hmm, now that you mention it, that’s a good point,” the girl says, smiling calmly.

“Really—where did the girl go?”

Kaim momentarily considers pointing at the girl as if to say “Right here,” but before he can do so, she continues:

“This is the first time anybody ever asked me that. You’re kind of… Different.”

“I wonder…”

“No, you are. You’re different,” the girl insists

“I think we can be friends.” Her smile deepens.

Kaim smiles back at her, saying nothing.

Just then, they hear the lady greengrocer coming from the back of the shop, and the girl dashes away.

Just before she disappears around the corner into the alleyway, the girl gives Kaim a little wave as if to say “See you soon!” For the first time, the face of the girl with the all-too-grownup speaking style shows a hint of childishness befitting her years.

The girl begins coming to see Kaim at the shop several times a day when the lady grocer is not around.

She tells him one lie after another.

“I baked cookies with my mother last night. I wanted to give you some, but they were so good i ate them all.”

“Bandits kidnapped me when I was a little baby, but my father came to save me and beat up all the bandits, so I didn’t get killed.”

“My house? It’s a big, white one at the foot of the mountain. You’re new here so you probably don’t know it. It’s the biggest house in town.”

“You don’t have a family? You’re all alone? Poor Kaim! I wish I could share some of my happiness with you!”

All her lies are borne of sorrow: sad, lonely lies she could never tell to marketplace people who know her background.

At the end of every chat with Kaim, as she is leaving, the girl holds her finger to her lips and says,

“This is just our little secret. Don’t tell the lady grocer.”

Of course, Kaim says nothing to anyone.

If he happens to find himself in a situation where the market people are speaking ill of the girl, he quietly slips away.

Lies and disparagements are funny things. They don’t take shape because someone tells them but rather because someone listens to and voices agreement with them.

A truly isolated individual can never speak ill of anyone.

The same can be said regarding lies.

Because she has someone to tell her lies to, the girl need not fall into the abyss of true isolation.

To protect her small, sad share of happiness, Kaim plays the role of her listener, raising no objections.

One day when the girl comes to see Kaim, she takes special care not to be noticed by the lady grocer or by the owners of the neighboring shops.

“Tell me, Mister, are you planning to stay here a long, long time?”

“No, I’m not,” Kaim says, continuing to unload vegetables and fruit.

“You’ll be leaving when you save up enough money?”

“Probably.”

“But you don’t have enough yet?”

“I’m getting there,” he says, turning a strained smile on the girl.

This is a white lie of his own. He already has enough money to support himself on the road. Nor has he taken his current live-in job because he needs money so badly.

He is here because he has not found a destination he wants to travel to. A journey without a destination is an endless journey.

Wise men say that you need dreams and goals in life. But dreams to accomplish and goals to realize shine as guideposts in life precisely because life is finite.

So, then, what should be the dreams and goals of one who has been burdened with a life that has no end?

Kaim’s is not a journey to be hurried.

Nor is it one that can be hurried. Perhaps drifting day after day with no destination cannot even be called a journey.

“If I were you,” says the girl, “I would get out of this marketplace as soon as I had saved up enough for two or three days of traveling.”

Kaim responds to her with a silent, pained smile.

What would be the look on the girl’s face if Kaim were to tell her, “I’m staying here for you”?

I am finding the meaning of my life for now in providing you with a listener for your lies. The moment these words come to mind—words he can never actually speak to her—the girl looks around furtively and says in a near-whisper, “If you want to get out of here soon, I know a good way you can do it.”

“A good way…?”

“Sneak into the tailor’s and steal his money. There’s a little pot in the cabinet at the back of the shop. It’s full of money.”

“Are you telling me to steal it?”

“Yes.”

She looks straight at Kaim without the slightest show of doubt in her eyes.

In all seriousness, she goes on to explain, “That tailor deserves to have his place robbed.”

The money in the pot, she says, is tainted.

“I know this girl, a good friend of mine,” she says, “and it’s so sad about her.

Her mother died, and her father went off to work in the capital, and she’s all alone.

Her father was supposed to come and get her after six months, but she hasn’t heard a thing from him.”

Yet another lie borne of sorrow.

Kaim calmly asks, “Is there some connection between your friend and the tailor?”

“Of course,” she says. “A close connection. What’s really happening is the father was sending her money every month the way he was supposed to, to help make her life in the town a little easier. And he kept writing to her. He wanted to tell her he found a good job in the city and she should come to live with him right away. He’s too busy to come for her, so she should come to him. And he sent her money for the trip. But none of the letters or the money ever reached the girl.

And why do you think that is?”

Before Kaim can answer, the girl says, “The mistake he made was to send the letters and money care of the tailor. He’s been keeping all the money for himself.”

Kaim looks away from the girl.

In order to prop up one sad lie, the girl has piled on a still sadder one—a lie that can hurt another person.

This is the saddest thing of all.

“The lock on the tailor’s back door would be really easy to break,” the girl adds, and she gallops away without waiting for Kaim’s reply.

The girl comes running into the grocery store the next morning, shouting for the owner.

She says directly to the woman, not to Kaim,

“Burglars broke into the tailor’s shop last night!”

She says she saw a number of burglars sneaking in late at night after the marketplace emptied out.

“My oh my,” says the woman with a forced smile, “that must have been just terrible.”

She is obviously not taking the girl seriously.

“But it’s true, though! I really saw them!”

“Look, little girl, I’ve had just about all I can take from you. You’re such a little liar, it scares me to death to think about you growing up to be a burglar or a con artist or something. I’m busy trying to open my shop now, do you mind? Try in on somebody else.”

She is hardly through speaking when someone outside shouts,

“Help! Somebody come!” The tailor is standing in the street looking horrified and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Bur—burglars! They took all my mo-mo-money!”

The little girl slips away as the tailor comes in.

The marketplace is in an uproar.

The girl was not lying: that much is certain.

But, all too accustomed to her lies, people now suggest the possibility of another kid of lie.

“Maybe she did it. What do you think?”

And so it begins…

“I think you may be right.”

“Talk about play-acting!”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Let’s go find her. We’ll make her tell—even if we have to get a little rough with her.”

No one objects to this suggestion.

Some run off to the storehouse, and the others start searching the marketplace.

“Can’t find her anywhere!”

“The storehouse is empty.”

“She ran away with the money!”

As the searchers return with their reports and speculation,

Kaim finally understands everything.

After all her sad lies, the girl has left behind one final truth.

“She couldn’t have gotten very far!”

“Yeah, we can still catch her!”

“The little thief! Wait till I get my hands on her!”

The men rage, and the women fan the flames:

“Good! Give her what she deserves!”

“We were so nice to her, and now look how she treats us! We can’t let her get away with it!”

A dozen men start to run after her,

but Kaim stands tall in the road, blocking their way.

“Hey, move it!”

The men are out for blood, but Kaim knows if he felt like it, he could knock them all down and they wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him.

Instead, he relaxes his powerful stance and throws a leather coin pouch on the ground in front of the men.

“The stolen money is in there,” he says.

“What?”

“Sorry, I stole it.”

A confused stir quickly turns into angry shouts.

Kaim raises his hands to show he will not resist.

“Do what you like with me, I’m ready.”

The lady grocer breaks through the wall of men, shouting at him, “How could you do this, Kaim?”

“I wanted the money, that’s all.”

“And you’re not just saying this to protect the girl?”

The woman’s intuition is too sharp.

Forcing a smile, Kaim turns to the tailor and says, “It was in the pot in the cabinet, right?”

The man nods energetically.

“It’s true! He must have done it! I had the money in a pot! He’s the thief!”

“The money wasn’t the only thing in the pot, though, was it?”

“What are you saying?”

“You had some letters in there, too. Letters from the girl’s father.”

“That’s a lie! Don’t be crazy!”

“It’s true, though.”

“No, there couldn’t have been any letters! I threw them all—”

The tailor claps his hands over his mouth.

But it is too late.

The lady grocer glares at him.

“What’s this all about?” she demands.

“Uh… no… I mean…”

“You’d better tell us everything.”

The people’s angry glances turn from Kaim to the tailor.
Some days later, two letters arrive from the girl addressed to “The lady at the grocery store and the nice man upstairs.”

Kaim’s letter says the girl managed to find her father in the capital.

He has no way of knowing if this is true or not.

It is hard to imagine a little girl finding her father in the big city so easily without knowing his address or workplace.

Still, he decides to believe it when the girl’s letter says,
“I am happy now.”
Human beings are the only animals that lie.

Lies to deceive people, lies to benefit oneself, and lies to protect one’s own heart from the threat of crushing loneliness and sorrow.

If there were no lies in this world, much strife and misunderstanding would surely disappear.

On the other hand, perhaps it is because this world is a mixture of truth and lies that people have learned how to “believe.”

When he is through reading his letter, Kaim turns to the woman.

Concentrating on her own letter, she shyly raises her head when she senses Kaim looking at her.

“I give up!” she declares. “Listen to this:

‘I am so grateful to you and the others in the marketplace for all you have done for me. I will never forget you as long as I live.’

A liar to the bitter end, that girl,” she says, smiling through her tears.
End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 05: A Mother Comes Home

Posted on by Arleigh

We’re now on the 5th Day of a 33-Day Thousand Years of Dreams. The previous four dream entries have saw us witness Kaim’s remembering dreams with themes ranging from youthful curiosity, mortality, personal imprisonment and the amorphous nature of memory. This fifth dream which is called “A Mother Comes Home” brings forth a topic that some may feel some kinship to. A theme of children and how those who should be nurturing them, protecting them and loving them have failed in their responsibilities. How neglect, selfishness and the feeling of being unwanted forces some young children to leave their childhood behind and become an adult far too quickly to protect themselves.

Everyday I see such occurrences happening in public and in the news. I can’t say I’ve experienced it myself, but it still doesn’t diminish the emotional impact seeing it happen to other young children. Just as Kaim feels sadness, pity and regret at seeing the young boy grown beyond his years and leave the innocent, naivete of childhood behind so should we feel the same when we see it happen to children around us.

In the end, while the theme of this dream-memory does have a feel of sadness and melancholy it does end on a hopeful note. No matter how badly we treat our children and those we care for there’s always a chance for forgiveness and redemption. There’s always a chance for broken families to be whole once more. There’s always a chance for children who have grown up too fast to find their way to being just children once again.

A Mother Comes Homes

The boy has lost his smile, though he denies it.

“Don’t be silly, Kaim.
Look! I’m smiling, aren’t I?”

He draws his cheeks back and lets his teeth show white against his brown skin.

“If this isn’t a smile, what is?”

Kaim nods but says nothing. He pats the boy on the shoulder as if to say, “Sure, sure.”

 

“Come on, really look at me. I’m smiling, right?”

“Right. You’re smiling.”

“Anyway, forget about me. Hurry, let’s go.”

 

The boy has a sweet, open nature.

He made instant friends with Kaim while the other townspeople kept their distance from the “strange traveler.”

Not that the boy chose the much older Kaim as a playmate.

He leads Kaim to the tavern, which still hasn’t opened its doors for the day.

“I hate to ask you to do this, but… would you, please?”

 

The boy’s voice seems to have carried inside.

A man in the tavern peals off a drunken howl. He sounds especially bad today. Kaim fights back a sigh and enters the tavern.

The man on the barstool is the boy’s father, drunk again at midday.

The boy is here to take him home. He looks at his father with sad eyes.

Kaim puts his arm around the father’s shoulder and discreetly moves the whiskey bottle away from him.

 

“Let’s call it a day,” he says. The man shoves Kaim’s arm off and slumps down on the bar.

“I hate guys like you,” he says.

“Yes, I know,” says Kaim. “It’s time to go home, though. You’ve had enough.”

“You heard me, Kaim. Drifter! I hate you guys.
I really really hate you guys.”

 

The father is always like this when he is drunk—hurling curses at all “drifters,” picking fights with any man dressed for the road, and finally slumping to the ground to sleep it off. His son is too small to drag him home.

With a sigh, Kaim finds himself again today supporting the drunken father’s weight to keep him from toppling off the barstool.

The boy stares at his father, his eyes a jumble of sadness, anger, and pity.

When his eyes meet Kaim’s he shrugs as if to say “Sorry to keep putting you through this.”

 

But Kaim is used to it. He has seen the father dead-drunk almost every day for the past year, ever since the boy and his father were left to live alone.

“Oh, well …” the boy says with a strained smile as if trying to resign himself to the situation.

“Poor Papa…

…poor me.”

 

Supporting the father’s weight on his shoulder, Kaim gives the boy a smile and says,
“Yes, but you don’t go out and get drunk the way he does.”

“Ahem,” the boy says, puffing his chest out.

“Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

Kaim broadens his smile to signal to him “You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” the boy all but says with the smile he gives back.

 

It is the only kind of a smile the ten-year-old has managed to produce in the past year: so bitter it would numb your tongue if you could taste it.

The boy’s mother—the father’s wife—left home a year ago.

She fell in love with a traveling salesman and abandoned the boy and his father.

“Mama was bored,”
the boy says matter-of-factly, looking back on his mother’s infidelity.

“She got tired of doing the same thing every day. That’s when she met him.”

 

At the tender age of ten, the boy has learned that there are certain stories that have to be told with that matter-of-fact tone.

The father was born and raised in this small town and worked in the town office. He was not especially talented, but it was not a job that called for talent or quick wit. All he had to do was follow orders with diligence and submissiveness, and he did exactly that, year after year, without making waves.

“He called our life ‘peaceful,’ but Mama didn’t think so.
She said it was just ‘ordinary’ and no fun.”

 

She was attracted to the life of the crafty traveling salesman.

It was risky and exciting, like walking on top of a prison wall: one misstep and you could end up inside.

“Papa told Mama that the man was deceiving her, that all he wanted was her money, but he couldn’t get through to her. Mama couldn’t even think about us back then.”

With utter detachment, as though holding it at arm’s length, the boy reflects on the tragedy that struck his family.

 

“I’ve heard the saying ‘Love is blind.’ It really is!” he says with a shrug and a sardonic laugh like a full-fledged adult.

Kaim says nothing.

“Children should act their age” is another saying, but probably not one that could be spoken with a great deal of meaning to a boy who had lost his mother’s love.

And even if Kaim presumed to admonish him, the boy would likely pass it off with a strained smile and say,
“Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

 

The boy’s father, however, shows his displeasure when his son uses grownup expressions.

“The little twerp’s lost all his boyishness. He despises me now. He thinks I’m pitiful. Deep down he’s laughing at me for letting my wife be taken by another man, damn him.”

It bothers him especially when he is drunk.

His annoyance far outweighs his fatherly love for his son. Sometimes he even slaps the boy across the face, or tries to. When he is drunk, the boy can easily dodge his slaps, and he ends up sprawled on the floor.

 

Even as he is drowning in a sea of liquor, he can sometimes turn unexpectedly serious and start asking questions.

“Say, Kaim, you’ve been traveling for a long time, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you enjoy it all that much? Going to strange towns; meeting strangers can’t be all that… Is it so wonderful that you’d be willing to abandon the life you’re living now for it?”

He asks the same thing over and over. Kaim’s answer is always the same.

“Sometimes it’s enjoyable, and sometimes it’s not.”

He doesn’t know what else to say.

 

“You know, Kaim, I’ve never set foot outside this town. Same with my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, and the one before him. We’ve always been born here and died here. My wife’s family, too. They’ve had roots in this town for generations. So why did she do it? Why did she leave? What did she need so badly that she had to leave me and her own son?”

Kaim merely smiles without answering. The answer to such a question cannot be conveyed in words. Try though he might to explain it, the reason certain people are drawn irresistibly to the road can never be understood by people who don’t have that impulse. The father is simply one of those people who can never understand.

Failing to elicit a reply from Kaim, the father sinks again into the sea of drunkenness.

 

“I’m scared, Kaim,” he says. “My son might do it, too. He might go away and leave me here someday. When I hear him talking like a grownup, I get so scared I can’t stand it.”

 

The boy’s mother eventually comes back.

The traveling salesman cheated her out of every last bit of her savings, and the moment she was no longer any use to him, he left her. Physically and mentally broken, she has only one place to return to—the home she abandoned.

First she writes a letter from the neighboring town, and when her husband reads it again and again through drink-clouded eyes, he laughs derisively.

“Serves her right, the miserable witch.”

He makes a show of tearing the letter to pieces in front of Kaim, without showing it to his son.

 

Kaim tells the boy everything and asks him,

“What do you want to do?
Whatever you decide, I’ll help you make it happen.”

“Whatever I decide?” the boy asks in return with his usual detached smile.

“If you want to leave this town, I’ll let you have enough money to help you get by for a while,” Kaim says. “I can do that much.”

He is utterly serious.

 

The father has no intention of forgiving his wife. He will almost certainly turn her away if she shows up, and probably with a proud, vindictive smile on his face.

Kaim knows, however, that if the mother loses her home and leaves this town once and for all, the father will go back to drinking every day, cursing his wife’s infidelity, bemoaning his own fate, taking out his anger on strangers, and constantly revealing the worst side of himself to his son.

Kaim’s long life on the road has taught him this. Constant travel means meeting many different people, and the boy’s father is undoubtedly one of the weakest men Kaim has ever met.

 

“You could join your mother and go to another town.
Or if you wanted to go somewhere by yourself, I could find you work.”

Either would be better, Kaim believes, than for the boy to continue living alone like this with his father.

The boy, however, seemingly intrigued, looks straight at Kaim, revealing his white teeth.

 

“You’ve been traveling a long time, haven’t you, Kaim?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Always alone?”

“Sometimes alone, sometimes not…”

“Hmmm…”

 

The boy gives a little nod and, with the sad smile of a grownup, says,
“You don’t really get it do you?”

“What’s that?”

“All this traveling, and you still don’t understand the most important thing.”

His sad smile takes on its usual bitter edge.

Kaim finally learns what the boy is talking about three days later.

 

A tired-looking woman in tattered clothes drags herself from the highway into the marketplace.

The townsfolk back away from her, staring, leaving her in the center of a broad, empty circle.

The boy’s mother has come back.

 

The boy breaks his way through the crowd and enters the circle.

The mother sees her son, and her travel-withered cheeks break into a smile.

The boy takes one step, and another step toward his emaciated, smiling mother.

He is hesitant at first, but from the third step he is running,
and he throws his arms around her.

He is crying. He is smiling. For the first time that Kaim has seen,
he wears the unclouded smile of a child.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me…” his mother begs, in tears.

 

She clasps his head to her bosom and says, smiling through her tears,
“You’ve gotten so big!”

Then she adds: “I won’t leave you again. I’ll stay here forever…”

A stir goes through the crowd.

It comes from the direction of the tavern.

 

Now the father breaks through the wall of people and enters the circle.

He is drunk.

Stumbling, he edges toward his wife and son. He glares at his wife.

The boy stands between them, guarding his mother.

“Papa, stop it!” he yells.
“Mama is back. That’s enough, isn’t it? Forgive her, Papa, please!”

His voice is choked with tears.

The father says nothing in reply.

 

Glaring at the two of them, he collapses to his knees, his arms open wide.

He enfolds both his wife and son.

The shattered family is one again.

“Papa, please, don’t hold us so tight! It hurts!”

The boy is crying and smiling.

The mother can only sob.

The father weeps in rage.

 

Witnessing the scene from the back of the crowd, Kaim turns on his heels.

“Are you really leaving?”
the boy asks again and again as he accompanies Kaim to the edge of town.

“Uh-huh. I want to get across the ocean before winter sets in.”

“Papa is already missing you. He says he thought you two could finally become drinking buddies from now on.”

“You can drink with him when you grow up.”

“When I grow up, huh?” the boy cocks his head, a little embarrassed, then he mutters,
“I wonder if I’ll still be living in this town then.”

 

No one knows that, of course. Maybe some years on from now, the father will spend his days drunk again because his son has left his hometown and family.

And yet—Kaim recalls something he forgot to say to the boy’s weak father.

“We call it a ‘journey’ because we have a place to come home to. No matter how many detours or mistakes a person might make, as long as he has a place to come home to, a person can always start again.”

“I don’t get it,” says the boy.

 

Kaim remembers something else.

“Smile for me,”
he says one last time, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Like this?”

He reveals his white teeth, and his cheeks wrinkle up.

It’s a good smile.

He has finally managed to retrieve the smile of a young boy.

 

“Now your turn, Kaim.”

“Uh… sure.”

The boy studies Kaim’s smile as if assigning it a grade.

“Maybe a little sad,” he says. That he is joking makes his words hit home all the more.

The boy smiles again as if providing a model for Kaim.

 

“Okay, then,” he says with a wave of the hand,

“I’m going shopping with Papa and Mama today.”

Kaim smiles and walks away.

Then he hears the boy calling his name one last time.

“Even if we’re saying goodbye, I’m not going to cry, Kaim!
Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

 

Kaim does not look back, his only reply a wave of the hand.

The boy’s expression would probably change if their eyes met.

He decides to play it strong to the end.

Kaim walks on.

After a brief respite, his journey with no place to go home to starts again.

A journey with no place to go home to; the poets call that “wandering.”

End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 04: In the Mind of a Captive

Posted on by Arleigh

On the 4th Day of our Thousand Years of Dreams we find Kaim, the eternal warrior, remembering a particularly hopeless and spirit-sapping dream of a time when he was imprisoned during his thousand years of wandering the lands.

There’s something beyond just the horror of imprisonment and how it’s  effect on the mind and spirit of the imprisoned is more dangerous than to their body. While the dream is about one of the many time he has experienced such stagnation of the mind and spirit the very theme underlying the tale could be attached to one’s everyday life. One doesn’t have to be in an actual prison to have an idea of what Kaim speaks of.

This actual prison could be of one’s making as they go through life stuck in doing something which saps their creativity and spirituality. Anyone who has ever found themselves in a line of work which does nothing to encourage growth and foster enjoyment of life would understand what Kaim speaks of. Who here has seen themselves stuck in a job they hate, but unable to quit because they’ve lost sight of how to enjoy life thus work is all there is. Who here has found themselves in a relationship which has stagnated and afraid to free themselves because they don’t see themselves as able to find new friends and partners to enjoy life with.

It’s these prisons both real and of metaphorical which this dream tries to impart a lesson which Kaim tries to remember. That brief puff of air moving a welcome respite to the unchanging air or the change of scenery even if the briefest of moments helps in keeping one’s sanity and spirit from dying. It’s such little things that we try to remember to do to bring a semblance of change to our humdrum and locked in lives which brings people a step closer to freedom and fully enjoying once again.

I find this dream quite illuminating in how so many of us refuse to risk new things and attempt the unknown for fear of failure, embarrassment and ridicule. We’d rather keep ourselves safe and secure doing the same things over and over again and as each such day passes the more bricks we build around our own personal prisons.

In the Mind of a Captive

He knows that it is useless. But he can’t suppress the impulse that wells up from within his own flesh.

He needs to do it—to hurl his entire body against the bars. It does no good at all. His flesh simply bounces off the thick iron bars. “Number 8! What the hell are you doing?” The guard’s angry shout echoes down the corridor. The prisoners are never called by name, only by the numbers on their cells. Kaim is Number 8.

 

Kaim says nothing. Instead, he slams his shoulder against the bars.

The massive bars of iron never nudge. All they do is leave a dull, heavy ache in Kaim’s superbly conditioned muscles and bones.

Now, instead of shouting again, the guard blows his whistle, and the other guard come running from their station.

“Number 8! What’s it going to take to make you understand?”

“Do you want to be thrown into the punishment cell?”

“Don’t look at me like that. Start resisting, and all it will get you is a longer time in here!”

 

Sitting on the floor of his cell, legs splayed out, Kaim ignores the guards’ shouts.

He has been to the punishment room any number of times. He knows he has been branded a “highly rebellious prisoner.”

But he can’t help himself.

Something is squirming deep down inside him.

Some hot thing trapped inside there is seething and writhing.

 

“Some war hero you turned out to be!” says one guard.

“You can’t do shit in here. What’s the matter, soldier boy? Can’t do anything without an enemy staring you in the face?”

The guard next to him taunts Kaim with laughter.

“Too bad for you, buddy, no enemies in here? Nobody from your side, either. We’ve got you locked up all by yourself.”

After the guards leave, Kaim curls up on the floor, hugging his knees, eyes clamped tight.

 

All by myself—

The guard was right.

I thought I was used to living alone, in battle, on the road.

But the loneliness here in prison is deeper than any I’ve ever experienced before.

And more frightening.

Walls on three sides, and beyond the bars nothing but another wall enclosing the narrow corridor.

This dungeon was built so as to prevent prisoners from seeing each other, or even to sense each others’ presence.

 

The total lack of a change in the view paralyzes the sense of time as well. Kaim has no idea how many days have passed since he was thrown in here. Time flows on, that much is certain. But with nowhere to go, it simply stagnates inside him.

The true torture that prison inflicts on a man is neither to rob him of his freedom nor to force him to experience loneliness.

The real punishment is having to live where nothing ever moves in your field of view and time never flows.

The water in a river will never putrefy, but lock it in a jar and that is exactly what it will eventually do.

The same is true here.

 

Maybe parts of him deep down in his body and mind are already beginning to give off a rotten stench.

Because he is aware of this, Kaim drags himself up from the floor again and slams himself into the bars over and over.

There is not the remotest chance that doing so will break a bar.

Nor does he think he can manage to escape this way.

Still, he does it repeatedly.

 

He can’t help himself. He has to do it again and again.

In the instant before his body smashes into that bars—for that split second—a puff of wind strikes his cheek. The unmoving air moves, if only for that brief interval. The touch of the air is the one thing that gives Kaim a fragmentary hint of the flow of time.

The guards comes running, face grim with anger.

Now I can see human shapes where before there was only a wall. That alone is enough to lift my spirits. Don’t these guards realize that?

“All right, Number 8, it’s the punishment room for you! Let’s see if three days in there will cool your head!”

 

Kaim’s lips relax into a smile when he hears the order.

Don’t these guys get it? Now my scenery will change. Time will start flowing again. I’m thankful for that.

Kaim laughs aloud.

The guards tie his hand behind him, put chains on his ankles, and start for the punishment room.

“What the hell are you laughing at, Number 8?”

“Yeah, stop it! We’ll punish you even more!”

But Kaim just keeps on laughing; laughing at the top of his lungs.

 

If I fill my lungs with all new air, will the stench disappear?
Or have my body and mind rotted so much already that I can’t get rid of the stench so easily?
How long will they keep me locked up in here?
When can I get out of here?
Will it be too late by then?
When everything has rotted away, will I become less a “him” than an “it,” the way our troops count enemy corpses?

 

Kaim can hardly breathe.

It is as if the air is being squeezed out of his chest and the excruciating pain of it is drawing him back from the world of dreams to reality.

Was I once in a prison in the far, far distant past?

He half-wanders in the space between dream and reality.

He has had this dream any number of times—this nightmare, it might even be called. After waking, he tried to recall it, but nothing stays in his memory. One thing is certain, however: the appearance of the jail and of the guards in the dream if always the same.

 

Could this be something I have actually experienced?
If so, when could it have been?

There is no way for him to tell.

 

Once he is fully awake, those questions he asked between dream and reality are, themselves, erased from his memory.

He springs up with a scream, his breath labored, the back of his hand wiping the streams of sweat from his brow, and all that is left is the shuddering terror. It is always like this.

Now, too—

 

He mutters to himself as he attempts to retrieve whatever memory is left in a remote corner of his brain. “What kind of past life could I have lived through?”

End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 03: White Flowers

Posted on by Arleigh

For Day 3 of the 33 Days of Thousand Years of Dreams we have the Lost Odyssey dream sequence called “White Flowers”.

Like the first two dreams already posted this one continues to have Kaim remembering one of the uncounted memories he thought had had lost. Memories which stretches a thousand years or more. “White Flowers” is a dream memory that leans towards melancholy, but with a sense that it was still one of the happier moments in the life of the eternal warrior. For those who are not eternal it’s a poignant short story on how calamitous events and how they’re initially remembered change through the decades and centuries. How the farther one gets from the initial catastrophe the less mournful each anniversary becomes until it finally turns celebratory for how survivors have recovered and their descendants prospered.

In the end, “White Flowers” more personal and intimate meaning as scene from the eyes of Kaim gives the lesson that we should always live our lives to the fullest. Lives that could continue for decades and into old age, but also lives easily snuffed out just before it has truly begun to live. Live life every day like it was the last then do the same when a new day begins.

White Flowers

Lovely white flowers mask the town. They bloom on every street corner, not in beds or fields set aside for their cultivations, but blending naturally and in line with every row of houses, as though the buildings and the blossoms have grown up together.

The season is early spring and snow still lingers on the nearby mountains, but the stretch of ocean that gently laps the town’s southern shore is bathed in refulgent sunlight.

This is an old and prosperous harbor town.

Even now, its piers see many cruise ships and freighters come and go.

 

Its history, however, is sharply divided between the time “before” and the time “after” an event that happened one day long ago.

People here prefer not to talk about it—the watershed engraved upon the town’s chronology.

The memories are too sorrowful to make stories out of them.

Kaim knows this, and because he knows it, he has come here once again.

 

“Passing through?” the tavern master asks him.

At the sound of his voice, Kaim responds with a faint smile.

“You’re here for the festival, I suppose. You should take your time and enjoy it.”

The man is in high spirits. He has joined his customers in glass after glass until now and is quite red in the face, but no one shows any signs of blaming him for overindulging. Every seat in the tavern is filled and the air reverberates with laughter. Happy voices can be heard now and then as well from the road outside.

The entire town is celebrating. Once each year the festival has people making merry all night long until the sun comes up.

 

“I hope you’ve got a room for the night, Sir. Too late to find one now! Every inn is full to overflowing.”

“So it seems.”

“Not that anyone could be foolish enough to spend a night like this quietly tucked away under the covers in his room.”

The tavern master winks at Kaim as if to say “Not you, Sir. I’m sure!”

“Tonight we’re going to have the biggest, wildest party you’ve ever seen, and everybody’s invited—locals or not. Drink, food, gambling, women: just let me know what you want. I’ll make sure you have it.”

 

Kaim sips his drink and says nothing.

Because he is planning to stay awake all night, he has not taken a room—though he has no plans to enjoy the festival, either.

Kaim will be offering up a prayer at the hour before dawn when the night is at its darkest and deepest. He will leave the town, sent off by the morning sun as it pokes its face up between the mountains and the sea, just as he did at the time of his last visit. Back then, the tavern master, who a few minutes ago was telling one of his regular customers that his first grandchild is about to be born, was himself just an infant.

“This one’s on me, drink up!” says the tavern master, filling Kaim’s shot glass.

He peers at Kaim suspiciously and says, “You did come for the festival, didn’t you?”

 

“No, not really,” says Kaim.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know about it!
You mean you came here by pure chance?”

“Afraid so.”

“Well, if you came here on business, forget it.
You’ll never get serious talk out of anybody on a special night like this.”

The tavern master goes on to explain what is so special about this night.

“You must’ve heard something about it. Once, a long time ago, this town was almost completely destroyed.”

 

There are two great events that divide history into “before” and “after”: one is the birth or death of some great personage—a hero or a savior.

The other is something like a war or plague or natural disaster.

What divided this town’s history into “before” and “after” was a violent earthquake.

It happened without warning and gave the soundly sleeping people of the town no chance to flee.

A crack opened up in the earth with a roar, and roads and buildings just fell to pieces.

Fires started, and they spread in the twinkling of an eye.

Almost everyone was killed.

 

“You probably cant imagine it. All I know is what they taught me in school. And what does ‘Resurrection Festival’ mean to a kid! It was just something that happened ‘once upon a time.’ I live here and that’s all it means to me, so a traveler like you probably can’t even begin to imagine what it was like.”

“Is that what they call this holiday? ‘Resurrection Festival’?”

“Uh-huh. The town was resurrected from a total ruin to this.
That’s what the celebration is all about.”

Kaim gives the man a grim smile and sips his liquor.

“What’s so funny?” the tavern master asks.

 

“Last time I was here, they were calling it ‘Earthquake Memorial Day.’
It wasn’t a festival for this kind of wild celebrating.”

“What are you talking about?
It’s been the ‘Resurrection Festival’ ever since I was a kid.”

“That was before you were old enough to remember anything.”

“Huh?”

“And before that, they called it ‘Consolation of the Spirits.’ They’d burn a candle for each person who died, and pray for them to rest in peace. It was a sad festival, lots of crying.”

“You sound as if you saw it happening yourself.”

“I did.”

 

The tavern master laughs with a loud snort.

“You look sober, but you must be plastered out of your mind! Now listen, it’s festival night, so I’m going to let you off the hook for pulling my leg, but don’t try stuff like that in front of the other townspeople. All of our ancestors—mine included—are the ones who barely escaped with their lives.”

Kaim knows full well what he is doing. He never expected the man to believe him.

He just wanted to find out himself whether the townspeople were still handing down the memories of the tragedy—whether, deep down behind their laughing faces, there still lingered the sorrow that had been passed down from their forefather’s time.

 

Called away by one of his other customers, the tavern master leaves Kaim’s side but not without first delivering a warning.

“Be careful what you say, Sir. That kind of nonsense can get you in trouble. Really. Think about it: the earthquake happened all of two hundred years ago!”

Kaim does not answer him.

Instead, he sips his liquor in silence.

Among the ones who died in the tragedy two hundred years ago were his wife and daughter.

Of all the dozens of wives and hundreds of children that Kaim has had in his eternal life, the wife and child he had here were especially unforgettable.

 

In those days, Kaim had a job at the harbor.

There were just the three of them—he, his wife, and their little girl.
They lived simply and happily.

The same kind of days that had preceded today would continue on into endless tomorrows. Everyone in the town believed that—including Kaim’s wife and daughter, of course.

But Kaim knew differently. Precisely because his own life was long without end and he had consequently tasted the pain of countless partings, Kaim knew all too well that in the daily life of humans there was no “forever.”

This life his family was leading would have to end sometime. It could not go on unchanged. This was by no means a cause for sorrow, however. Denied a grasp upon “forever,” human beings knew how to love and cherish the here and now.

 

Kaim especially loved to show his daughter flowers—the more fragile and short-lived the better.

Flowers that bloomed with the morning sun and scattered before the sun went down. They were everywhere in this harbor town: lovely, white flowers that bloomed in early spring.

His daughter loved the flowers. She was a gentle child who would never break off blossoms that had struggled so bravely to bloom. Instead, she simply watched them for hours at a time.

That year, too…

 

“Look how big the buds are! They’ll be blooming any time now!” she said happily when she found the white flowers on the road near the house.

“Tomorrow, maybe?” Kaim wondered aloud.

“Absolutely!” his wife chimed in merrily. “Get up early tomorrow morning and have a look!”

“Poor little flowers, though,” said the daughter. “It’s nice when they bloom, but then they wither right away.”

“All the better” said Kaim’s wife. “It’s good luck if you get to see them blooming. It makes it more fun.”

 

“It may be fun for us,” answered the girl. “But think about the poor flowers. They work so hard to open up, and they wither that same day. It’s sad…”

“Well, yes, I guess so…”

A momentary air of sadness flowed into the room, but Kaim quickly dispelled it with a laugh.

 

“Happiness is not the same thing as ‘longevity’!” he proclaimed.

“What does that mean, Papa?”

“It may not bloom for long, but the flower’s happy if it can open up the prettiest blossom and give off the sweetest perfume it knows how to make while it is blooming.”

The girl seemed to be having trouble grasping this and simply nodded with a little sigh. She then broke into a smile and said, “It must be true if you say so, Papa!”

Your smile is more beautiful than any flower in full bloom.

He should have said it to her.

He later regretted that he had not.

The words he had uttered so carelessly, he came to realize, turned out to be something of a prophecy.

 

“Well now, young lady,” he said. “If you’re getting up early to see all the flowers tomorrow morning, you’d better go to bed right now.”

“All right, Papa, if I really have to…”

“I’m going to bed now, too” said Kaim’s wife.

“Okay, then. G’nite, Papa.”

His wife said to Kaim, “Good night, dear. I really am going to bed now.”

“Good night” Kaim replied, enjoying one last cup to ease the day’s fatigue.

 

These turned out to be the last words the family shared.

 

A violent earthquake struck the town before dawn.

Kaim’s house collapsed in a heap of rubble.

Kaim’s two loved ones departed for that distant other world before they could awaken from their sleep and without ever having had a chance to say “Good morning” to him.

 

The morning sun rose on a town that had been destroyed in an instant.

Amid the rubble, the flowers were blooming—the white flowers that Kaim’s daughter had wanted so badly to see.

Kaim thought to lay a flower in offering on his daughter’s cold corpse, but he abandoned the idea.

He could not bring himself to pick a flower.

No one—no living being on the face of the earth, he realized—had the right to snatch the life of a flower that possessed that life for only one short day.

 

Kaim could never say to his daughter,
“You go first to heaven and wait for me: I’ll be there before long.”

 

Nor would he ever know the joy of reunion with his loved ones.

 

To live for a thousand years, meant bearing the pain of a thousand years of partings.

 

Kaim continued his long journey.

A dizzying numbers of years and months followed by: years and months during which numberless wars and natural calamities scourged the earth. People were born, and they died. They loved each other and were parted from the ones they loved. There were joys beyond measure, and sorrows just as measureless. People fought and argued without end, but they also loved and forgave each other endlessly. Thus was history built up as the tears of the past evolved gradually into prayers for the future.

 

Kaim continued his long journey.

After a while, he rarely thought about the wife and daughter with whom he had spent those few short days in the harbor town. But he never forgot them.

Kaim continued his long journey.

And in the course of his travels, he stopped by this harbor town again.

 

As the night deepened, the din of the crowds only increased, but now, as a hint of light comes into the eastern sky, without a signal from anyone, the noise gives way to silence.

Kaim has been standing in the town’s central square. The revelers, too, have found their way here one at a time, until, almost before he knows it, the stone-paved plaza is filled with people.

Kaim feels a tap on the shoulder.

“I didn’t expect to find you here!” says the tavern master.

When Kaim gives him a silent smile, the tavern master looks somewhat embarrassed and says, “There’s something I forgot to tell you before…”

“Oh…?”

 

“Well, you know, the earthquake happened a long time ago. Before my father and mother’s time, even before my grandparents’ generation. It might sound funny for me to say this, but I can’t imagine this town in ruins.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I do think, though, that there are probably things in this world that you can remember even if you haven’t actually experienced them. Like the earthquake: I haven’t forgotten it. And I’m not the only one. It may have happened two hundred years ago, but nobody in this town has ever forgotten it. We can’t imagine it, but we can’t forget it, either.”

 

Just as Kaim nods again to signal his understanding of the tavern keeper’s words, a somber melody echoes throughout the square. This is the hour when the earthquake destroyed the town.

All the people assembled here close their eyes, clasp their hands together, and offer up a prayer, the tavern master and Kaim among them.

To Kaim’s closed eyes come the smiling faces of his dead wife and daughter. Why are they so beautiful and so sad, these faces that believe with all their hearts that tomorrow is sure to come?

 

The music ends.

The morning sun climbs above the horizon.

And everywhere throughout the town bloom countless white flowers.

 

In two hundred years, the white flowers have changed.

The scientists have hypothesized that “The earthquake may have changed the nature of the soil itself,” but no one knows the cause for sure.

The lives of the flowers have lengthened.

 

Where before they would bloom and wither in the space of a single day, now they hold their blooms for three and four days at a time.

Moistened by the dew of night, bathed in the light of the sun, the white flowers strive to live their lives to the fullest, beautifying the town as if striving to live out the portion of life denied to those whose “tomorrows” were snatched away from them forever.

End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 01: Hanna’s Departure

Posted on by Arleigh

So, we begin the first of 33 straight days of bringing the best thing about Mistwalker Studios’ 2008 role-playing game, Lost Odyssey, and why to this day its 33 short stories contained within the game as dream sequences remain one of the best writing in gaming ever. These short stories were written by Japanese novelist Shigematsu Kiyoshi. This collection of dreams would be collected under the title, “Thousand Years of Dreams”.

The first dream was the very first one a player acquires and comes across during the game. It is this dream which will trigger the main hero’s recollection of 33 total dreams as he travels and meets up and/or comes across situations to trigger a specific dream. This first dream is titled “Hanna’s Departure” and comes early in the game. Despite being the first it is also one of the best of the 33 and once you’ve watches and read the attached video clip of it above you will understand why. Below will be a transcript of the dream, but I recommend watching the video first and foremost.

Hanna’s Departure

The family members have tears in their eyes when they welcome Kaim back to the inn from his long journey.

“Thank you so much for coming.”

He understands the situation immediately.

The time for departure is drawing near.

 

Too soon, too soon.

But still, he knows, this day would have come sometime, and not in the distant future.

“I might never see you again,” she said to him with a sad smile when he left on this journey, her smiling face almost transparent in its whiteness, so fragile—and therefore indescribably beautiful—as she lay in bed.

 

“May I see Hanna now?” he asks.

The innkeeper gives him a tiny nod and says, “I don’t think she’ll know who you are, though.”

“She hasn’t opened her eyes since last night,” he warns Kaim. You can tell from the slight movement of her chest that she is clinging to a frail thread of life, but it could snap at any moment.

“It’s such a shame. I know you made a special point to come here for her…”

Another tear glides down the wife’s cheek.

 

“Never mind, it’s fine.” Kaim says.

He has been present at innumerable deaths, and his experience has taught him much.

Death takes away the power of speech first of all. Then the ability to see.

What remains alive to the very end, however, is the power to hear. Even though the person has lost consciousness, it is by no means unusual for the voices of the family to bring forth smiles or tears.

Kaim puts his arm around the woman’s shoulder and says, “I have lots of travel stories to tell her. I’ve been looking forward to this my whole time on the road.”

Instead of smiling, the woman releases another large tear and nods to Kaim, “And Hanna was so looking forward to hear your stories.”

Her sobs almost drown out her words.

 

The innkeeper says, “I wish I could urge you to rest up from your travels before you see her, but…”

Kaim interrupts his apologies, “Of course I’ll see her right away.”

There is very little time left.

Hanna, the only daughter of the innkeeper and his wife, will probably breathe her last before the sun comes up.

Kaim lowers his pack to the floor and quietly opens the door to Hanna’s room.

 

Hanna was frail from birth. Far from enjoying the opportunity to travel, she rarely left the town or even the neighborhood in which she was born and raised.

This child will probably not live to adulthood, the doctor told her parents.

This tiny girl, with extraordinarily beautiful doll-like features, the gods had dealt an all-too-sad destiny.

 

That they had allowed her to be born the only daughter of the keepers of a small inn by the highway was perhaps one small act of atonement for such iniquity.

Hanna was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parent’s inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know.

Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Hanna would ask them,

“Where are you from?” “Where are you going?”

“Can you tell me a story?”

 

She would sit and listen to their stories with sparkling eyes, urging them on to new episodes with “And then? And then?” When they left the inn, she would beg them, “Please come back, and tell me lots and lots of stories about faraway countries!”

She would stand there waving until the person disappeared far down the highway, give one lonely sigh, and go back to bed.

 

Hanna is sound asleep.

No one else is in the room, perhaps an indication that she has long since passed the stage when the doctors can do anything for her.

Kaim sits down in the chair next to the bed and says with a smile.

“Hello, Hanna, I’m back.”

She does not respond. Her little chest, still without the swelling of a grown woman, rises and falls almost imperceptibly.

 

“I went far across the ocean this time,” he tells her. “The ocean on the side where the sun comes up. I took a boat from the harbor way way way far beyond the mountains you can see from this window, and I was on the sea from the time the moon was perfectly round till it got smaller and smaller then bigger and bigger until it was full again. There was nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. Just the sea and the sky. Can you imagine it, Hanna? You’ve never seen the ocean, but I’m sure people have told you about it. It’s like a huge, big endless puddle.”

Kaim chuckles to himself, and it seems to him that Hanna’s pale white cheek moves slightly.

 

She can hear him. Even if she cannot speak or see, her ears are still alive.

Believing and hoping this to be true, Kaim continues with the story of his travels.

He speaks no words of parting.

As always with Hanna, Kaim smiles with a special gentleness he has never shown to anyone else, and he goes on telling his tales with a bright voice, sometimes even accompanying his story with exaggerated gestures.

He tells her about the blue ocean.

He tells her about the blue sky.

He says nothing about the violent sea battle that stained the ocean red.

He never tells her about those things.

 

Hanna was still a tiny girl when Kaim first visited the inn.

When she asked him “Where are you from?” and “Will you tell me some stories?” with her childish pronunciation and innocent smile, Kaim felt soft glow in his chest.

 

At the time, he was returning from a battle.

More precisely, he had ended one battle and was on his way to the next.

His life consisted of traveling from one battlefield to another, and nothing about that has changed to this day.

He has taken the lives of countless enemy troops, and witnessed the deaths of countless comrades on the battlefield. Moreover, the only thing separating enemies from comrades is the slightest stroke of fortune. Had the gears of destiny turned in a slightly different way, his enemies would have been comrades and his comrades enemies, This is the fate of the mercenary.

 

He was spiritually worn down back then and feeling unbearably lonely. As a possessor of eternal life, Kaim had no fear of death, which was precisely why each of the soldier’s faces distorted in fear, and why each face of a man who died in agony was burned permanently into his brain.

Ordinarily, he would spend nights on the road drinking. Immersing himself in an alcoholic stupor—or pretending to. He was trying to make himself forget the unforgettable.

When, however, he saw Hanna’s smile and begged him for stories about his long journey, he felt a far warmer and deeper comfort then he could even obtain from liquor.

 

He told her many things…

About the beautiful flower he discovered on the battlefield.

About the bewitching beauty of the mist filling the forest the night before the final battle.

About the marvelous taste of the spring water in a ravine where he and his men had fled after losing the battle.

About a vast, bottomless blue sky he saw after battle.

 

He never told her anything sad. He kept his mouth shut about the human ugliness and stupidity he witnessed endlessly on the battlefield. He concealed his position as a mercenary for her, kept silent regarding his reasons for traveling constantly, and spoke only of things that were beautiful and sweet and lovely. He sees now that he told Hanna only beautiful stories of the road like this not so much out of concern for her purity, but for his own sake.

 

Staying in the inn where Hanna waited to see him turned out to be one of Kaim’s small pleasures in life. Telling her about the memories he brought back from his journeys, he felt some degree of salvation, however slight. Five years, ten years, his friendship with the girl continued. Little by little, she neared adulthood, which meant that, as the doctors had predicted, each day brought her that much closer to death.

 

And now, Kaim ends the last travel story he will share with her.

He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again.

Before dawn, when the darkness of night is at its deepest, long pauses enter into Hanna’s breathing.

The frail thread of her life is about to snap as Kaim and her parents watch over her.

The tiny light that has lodged in Kaim’s breast will be extinguished.

His lonely travels will begin again tomorrow—his long, long travels without end.

 

“You’ll be leaving on travels of your own soon, Hanna.” Kaim tells her gently.

“You’ll be leaving for a world that no one knows, a world that has never entered into any of the stories you have heard so far. Finally, you will be able to leave your bed and walk anywhere you want to go. You’ll be free.”

He wants her to know that death is not sorrow but a joy mixed with tears.

“It’s your turn now. Be sure and tell everyone about the memories of your journey.”

Her parents will make that same journey someday. And someday Hanna will be able to meet all the guests she has known at the inn, far beyond the sky.

 

I, however, can never go there.

I can never escape this world.

I can never see you again.

“This is not goodbye. It’s just the start of your journey.”

He speaks his final words to her.

“We’ll meet again.”

His final lie to her.

 

Hanna makes her departure.

Her face is transfused with a tranquil smile as if she has just said,

“See you soon.”

Her eyes will never open again. A single tear glides slowly down her cheek.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Dead Meat: E-Serial Novel (by Chris and Patrick Williams)

Posted on by Arleigh

Like zombies films, stories and novels about our friendly neighborhood hungry undead are full of bad examples. Stories and novels with little or no sense of a narrative outside of trying to out-gore and gross their fellow writers and readers. One really has to weed out the crap and chaff in order to find quality zombie stories and tales. Those who have been good enough to publish their work usually bring something new or, at the very least, take the tried-and-true zombie story and make it seem new.

The e-serial zombie novel Dead Meat by Chris and Patrick Williams falls somewhere between the two. While the story is a straight-out zombie survival tale told from the point of view of a normal guy trying to get home the story adds a bit of paranoia about government conspiracy/culpability in regards to the zombie situation in addition to keeping the setting of the story very localize.

What I like about this particular zombie serial is the fact that the creators of the novel don’t try to get too complicated in trying to explain the main story-arc. Outside of calling the zombies the characters encounter “Bee’s” they follow the standard George A. Romero rules of zombie fiction. There’s nothing worse than an author trying to over-explain the plot of their zombie story or, even worse, trying to be clever in adding new rules in how zombies operate. I like my zombie entertainment simple and straight to the point.

Dead Meat is still on-going and from what I’ve read so far there’s more chapters to be told. The story is updated regularly, but even when the time between updates extend it’s never too infrequent that one gets frustrated waiting for the next chapter. So, to my fellow zombie genre fans this is one site and e-serial you all need to check out.

Official Site: Dead Meat – An E-Serial Novel