Invisible Number Fifty Four

Atee asked for directions. They asked where she was intending to go. She told them that's why she was asking. They thought they were sure she could think of some place to go. But, she just asked them to direct her.

Finally, one of them decided to help her. This one was the only one truly concerned about friendship. Someone to travel through life with, someone who would surrender to the earth, to renunciate all weakness. Their bones were stronger than stone, their blood thicker than chlorophyll, their skin more resistant than bark.

It was the power of the word that she lived her life by. When the word was quiet, she lived quietly. When the word was a shout, she lived out loud. She borrowed a pattern from a butterfly and wrapped it around her wings.

Her friend was authentic and true in her presence. The ferocious panthers were calm around her. Some beings played drums as Atee and her friend walked past their settlement. Something compelled her to look at the mountain rising higher and higher. The transparent music kept her senses fresh and her head innocent, curious and pure.

Her friend suggested they stay and share a meal at their settlement. They stopped the drums for the meal. Atee was always in wondrous awe at the power of food. Her body was just food. Inside she was replacing her weak parts with new ones.

Food taught her her first lessons on balance. How much to eat to create as much energy as necessary and how to feel grateful and give back. Ultimately, she would provide food to the world around her. That would be her last meal. She would think of this sometimes after eating too much. The only times she was very serious was during stomach aches.

Her friend had joined the band. Atee felt so fortunate to have met everybody. In a day, all in one day. She wanted to start this day as new year's, or at least, as the beginning of the month. She thought it over while the paced, listening to the drum music. She decided she would start her life over from this day.

Yesterday was a past life. Tomorrow doesn't exist. Today was a new life. And such a struggle it had been already! And such a party, and such fun! Such excitement, so much to reflect on as she drifted off to sleep later.

To prepare to let go of her memories of the day, she would wrap them into a knot, starting from that moment until the second she had awoken. She knew she could spend a long time preparing tonight.

Her friend played the whole concert with the band. They gave an encore. Atee was waiting for the encore in her life. An encore to her sleep and dreams. An encore for breakfast and supper, an encore for happiness and peace, an encore for pain and bitterness, an encore to love and friendship.

Maybe her whole life was an encore. Atee existed as the encore to yesterday. Everyday, she was called back to stage. They applauded but never criticized. There was nothing she could do on that stage that would be wrong. Everything that could ever happen to her was natural. Nature never supplied us with something unbearable. Atee pranced onstage as a flower of eternity. She was applauded and was cheered on to give another performance.

She turned her face to the curtains and jumped backwards onto the crowd. They helped their hands in the air and carried her like a feather. She closed her eyes and could swear on her weightlessness. The world was looking for new ways.

New ways to express and be expressed. Atee was just a reflection of these shadows. She could stand only on ground. She could swim only in water. She couldn't ride a boat without a captain, and she couldn't draw without the sun.

It looked like nothing was going to change. She just rested her bones. The crowed passed her back and forth. She slid like a slippery ice cube. She couldn't find the music. It could find her, her friend could wake her up. Gravity couldn't reach her. Her friend had to tell her of the perfect forms backstage. Her friend had to tell her of the flowing seasons in between snowfalls and summer rains.

Atee was outside her whole life. There wasn't anywhere else to be. Inside was just another name for outside the outside.

Atee and her friend were both ready for a wish. They thought of all the birthday cakes, wishing wells and shooting stars. They thought someone was destined to wish them.

Maybe they missed it, or they had already been wished. Maybe their asking was the wish itself. Their freedom may just be a wish. Their wishes may be someone else's wish. In this way, wishes were one. The was already was, just waiting for realization.

A whole galaxy of stars went marching to the other end of the cosmos. But one single light stood still, spinning itself a spiral. Some stars went back into space, others closer and closer. Becoming what they were not, wishes and wishes.

Atee was there when the stars entered the atmosphere. She was there when they came right to her. She was there when it was no larger than a marble. All the stars in the sky, just marble size. Nevermind what everyone had been told, Atee held it in her hand.

She walked down to the shore with her friend. She dreamed. She called out her friends name, they didn't hear her. They said something about water and put their hand against the handprints fossilized into the trees. She took them by the hand and they stepped through the luscious, rich, green grass to the river.

Atee tossed the marble into the river. It floated to the surface and a start descended into the sky. Her friend tossed in a lemon from a lovely tree growing above them. Sunlight breathed life into the dream. Her star could no longer be seen.

She knew this life was only dreamable once. She prayed others could be dreamable and spread their beauty even during sleep into the souls sleeping all at once. She knew her friend was only dreamable once. Who knows what would happen when she woke up. She wanted the stars to enlighten the isolated and the lost. She was under a single star.

She swam into the water, she descended into the sky. She took the sun and dropped back to earth. She ate the lemon.