The Water Carries The Memory (Patreon)

Hello again. Here is for you a story whose original form appeared on Twitter as a thread which I wrote nearly a year ago now. I have taken that story and formatted it such that it reads like a proper short story now, and now I am sharing it here. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

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Spread before me is an endless horizon of pools; lakes, watery mirrors which catch the light of ancient recollection, untouched and unremembered. I am not prepared for what it means to witness what the water is cradling, for beneath its surface are wonders and horrors that have passed the minds of untold multitudes, and to this dark water, I am transparent as glass.

Above the endless horizon of pools is a jet black sky cut with shimmering gold chiffon streamers blowing about in slow motion, twinkling jewels scattered lazily across the face of pure midnight, and a dim sun casting glacial light from a strange angle unlike anything seen before. This glacial light hovers over the land at a distance, only grazing the surface occasionally on a rocky outcrop, or a smooth and turning hill. The star which I am calling "the sun" itself appears fixed in the sky, and I feel that many aeons could pass here completely unbeknownst to me. As I take in this scenery, I notice that I am situated awkwardly on a small hill, not too far from one of these many strange pools which seem to stretch into infinity in every direction I look. The quality of the soil here is black, loose and stony, but I find no difficulty walking upon it.

As I wander forward, searching for some kind of internal bearing, I hear the sound of something rumbling a great distance away. It sings a deeply sonorous tone - melancholy with years - and for some moments I was totally unable to imagine its source.

But the light! Passing over the rocky outcrops and the smooth turning hills, perhaps it would give voice to the land, groaning as it curls and whips playfully over the stones and many hills, while hushing softly on the smoothly mirrored, glassy surface of the numerous dark pools. This strange and slowing glow emitted by the unmoving and somehow cold furnace hovering just beyond the clouds must be the source of this otherworldly land-song, and as I walk, I am glad to have heard it.

Glancingly I find myself looking down into one of these pools, and I am met with total stillness. More than stillness - there is somehow absolute emptiness. If it were not for the edges, this pool of black would be completely imperceptible, as I can detect not a single ripple, nor any reflection of any thing. I had the cursed thought of reaching down and touching this dark nothingness, but some small screaming voice in back of my mind gave me the distinct impression that I had done that somehow before - possibly a hazy dream? - and I would not like very much the result.

No, I could not see any thing no matter how forcefully I trained my perception upon this pool of pure night. There were no chiffon-like golden streaks, no twinkling stars scattered about, and most concerningly, there was not even a hint of me. I began moving around in vain trying to glance a very specific angle to catch the reflection of some thing in this dark mirror, and at last - A dim star. But as soon as it appeared, I became uncertain that it was the result of my angle, as there became suddenly a great multitude of stars, and none of them dim at all! And what's more, the glacial and slowing light from the sun in the sky had very acutely become brighter - the vast expanse of infinite horizon itself seemed to glow just that much more, and I felt clever for having noticed it.

I now felt a cosmic wind passing over me, where none had been before, and something shifted. I did not feel anything shifting physically, rather it was a sense of shifting in the consciousness of the space - as if its awareness had somehow heightened, and specifically it had become aware of me. 

Looking back now into the pool, I saw that the stars from before had totally vanished, and were replaced with something unreal. I saw in this dark pool the silhouette of a mountain - at first, blurred and unclear, and then suddenly quite clearly. Above this purple mountain I saw another black starry sky, and yet confusingly, a bright sun looming over its stoic peak. This image struck me - but I had no time to delve into it. The mountain and its strange sun disappeared too into blackness, and I felt the whirring of tumultuous clockwork thundering all around me. The strange sky flashed and then became dark once more, and my gaze was drawn again into the pool even through mounting fear.

I saw now very clearly the shape of a crashing wave against a sandy black beach. Time seemed expanded somehow and the motion of the water was unnaturally slowed. It looked at first to simply be a wave, but as I peered at this vision, I began to perceive more. In the contours of this strange image I saw the fabric of humanity itself, woven clearly to each droplet, every splash, and in its wild foamy peaks. The wave then crashed against the black shore and withered to virtually nothing, but from that same water again rose another wave - totally different than the last one and beautifully the same in every way! It was clear to me! The shape was that of all of humanity; every single walk of life, infinite pains and struggles as well as each sweet joy, all swirling about in some kind of gorgeous harmony. This wave, too, came crashing against the black shore and dissolved into nothing. But my thoughts were cut short again by a flashing of the sky, and I was staggered. The glacial sun flared as the wind around me became increasingly violent, whipping and lashing against everything and carrying hateful dust across the dry alien land.

Catching myself and leaning once again toward the black pool, I watched the skies of millions of years passing all at once. Clouds and billowing storms forming and vanishing, dancing over unbelievable landscapes - then I noticed patterns in those clouds and in those storms, and I saw that they were human, too. Over and over again the clouds grew from nothing and then vanished, storms born and grown to magnificent heights which then fall down onto mountains and into the wrinkled shadows of forests below. The sun's movement drew figures in the skies of ages: figures absolutely unseen at normal time scales which were now made very clear to me.

At these unspeakable sights I was deeply moved, and so began weeping. My tears fell down into the pool and mixed with this strange water, and immediately the sky flashed again. Once - Twice, and then the sound of thunder rolled across this foreign land.

This thundering knocked my awareness back into the present, and I leveled my gaze toward the familiar horizon stretching comfortably around me. I saw the cold light washing about in auroral streaks and heard quietly the sound of tinkling bells and charming hymns in unheard-of tongues beckoning from the glacial sun, whos perching on that distant horizon had not budged even slightly. The gold chiffon streaks undulated gracefully in the sky overhead, as if exalting the light beneath, and there was a concrete air of solemn yet ecstatic wonder which felt purely natural to me.

Brief was that respite, for in this renewal I dared to look once more into the dark pool. Now I was looking down onto a black and stony land covered in strange light, and the land was divided into many pools, each separate, yet similar. Amongst these pools I caught sight of a singular figure, who was looking down into one of them - and at the exact moment I was certain it was a person, they turned their own gaze upward and met mine from below.

This overwhelmed me, and I thrust myself away from the pool out of reflex for not wanting to be seen. At that moment I heard a sound from above like the cracking of ageless stone, and beyond the shimmering golden chiffon streamers, past the scattered and twinkling stars overhead, I saw something else. Above in the midnight black I saw an unusual and irregular shape - itself, also black, but somehow different from the black of the sky - and to my horror, emerging from the lower right corner of this void, there was a brilliant white circle that crept into view. I was seized unflinching by terror at the very sight of this and looked away instinctively, yet after only a moment, I was compelled to glance again at the object in the sky. On seeing it a second time I was even more distraught, and a fog of uncertainty grew upon me - I felt as though I was looking at something I should have recognized, but couldn't.

Not too long ago when human consciousness first sparked, the ability to recognize predator from prey, threat from opportunity, in a flickering instant would have been a valuable asset. Peering cautiously into a vast forest or across some dark unexplored distance, and choosing innately how to act - or react - based on a glimpse would surely have been useful for our great ancestral progenitors. However, even with things which are very finely tuned, there is the opportunity - and I would argue, the increasingly inevitable likelihood - for error. 

Glancing meekly into shadows, through forlorn and unusual spaces, our well-trained eyes might catch upon something that our much more anxious minds do not instantly know how to categorize. Seeing a face where the shadows cast in such a way to misinterpret one, or a human-like figure which turned out to just be a familiar piece of furniture, or a coat hanging from a wall-rack - these are the things that most people can relate to, having experienced thousands of micro-events like this very regularly, and knowing immediately the feeling of calming dismissal which comes after the bitter spike of unknowing.

These simple moments of terror - or sometimes less threateningly, and often comically, surprise - traverse the space of our consciousness quickly and are resolved with confident absoluteness. That is to say that the kind of mistake where we see something which is harmlessly inanimate, and believe that it is animate - or worse, a genuine danger - is ordinary and an easily relatable human experience. The opposite scenario however is of greater concern and more pointed relevance to this mood which I am conveying. To look at a thing and not recognize that it may be looking back at you is a very unsettling moment indeed - A moment which may extend into a haunted fear that follows you wherever you go, weaving through each conscious or subconscious imaginings, and chasing you even into your dreams.

For example, when you look into a mirror, you do recognize on some level that you are looking at an image which reflects you. Even though you are reversed from left to right, the layers of knowledge and experience we accumulate by living are enough to teach us intuitively that a reflection isn't what we are, but is instead a rather lossy shadow - and not one that is alive.

But when I looked up into that jet black sky of empty midnight, through the glacial light of the still burning sun, past the waving chiffon gold streaks and beyond the twinkling stars scattered like jewels - and saw the circle peering out from the irregular black void - I could not help but feel as if it were first looking back at me.