#that scene haunts my every waking hr and my sleeping ones too

[dr-lizortecho]

imagine being in such fear of your caretakers some weirdass dude walks in with a glowing sword and starts dueling them and they’re in such a rage about him tryna break you outta of your chains and you feel safe- quite possibly for the first time in your very short life- and this weirdass dude is also an evil dictator mass murder who burnt the population alive

[hiimsociallyawkward]

aithusia

hi bestie @lady-ofmagic-andstars it's been a while. i said i would do this episode last week but i had to wait for the destiny and chicken podcast to come out so here we are. basically, all of my thoughts while watching aithusia.

ugh the opening scene. i actually love it

ok ngl i remember that this guy is the bad guy but he's like 🥵🥵🥵 jeez

ik it's not just on tiktok but that tiktok where it goes 'but momma i'm in love with a criminal'

wow nice key bud

ok him running in the forest is just like you cannot outrun your demons and i thought that was so funny

smh he's so violent but he's so pretty :,)

ok but how old is this guy?? he say it's taken 20 years of his life. why 20? is that because that's when the 'last' dragon died out?? and at what age was he socially concious enough to recognize the implication of what it means to have a dragon? his is so dumb but probably like 15? so this guy is 35ish? idk man thoughts?

ok if he just feel off the cliff instead of being able to pull himself up we would've saved ourselves a lot of trouble i'm just saying druids.

ok this is so pretty. my thoughts are like 25% me singing show tunes, 25% thinking of actual merlin things, 50% thinking about how pretty everything is

merlin is such a light sleeper. idk why that's important but he wakes up ALL the time

✨gaius is the worst ✨

ok colin's eye looked so good in this scene

aLASFLJDFA MERLIN AND HIS SOCKS

stop i literally dress like this

i love his sleep clothes. it's such a vibe

aw merlin saying 'save the dragons is so cute' omg it reminds me of the vsco girls and saving the turtles HAHA

i love how equal merlin and kilgharrah feel here

asjflsjdasjdfl like ik this is the point but i love that merlin's inherited his father gift and he's always going to remember him. not that merlin would forget his father but idek

aw kilgharrah is like 'i beg you' ok now that i think abt it maybe it's slightly manipulative but it's also really not

ok actually i don't know how many time merlin uses this scene but i guess i'm keeping track now. but look how pretty

wow the rising sun 🤪

OH HAHA THIS IS WHERE MERLIN CARTWHEELS??

literally merlin just breaks in everywhere

merlin seems so earnest about wanting to see the dragons. i want to see the dragons too please

omg HAHA the woodworm is this episode??

WHY IS MERLIN STILL SEARCHING AFTER ARTHUR TURNS AROUND WHAT?

this is a side note but i love arthur's key holder thingy it's actually pretty.

stop right now why is merlin using his magic to PANTS arthur

ok i'm pretty sure that agravaine is only in this episode this one time, and yk it's the little victories

i'm actually embarassed for arthur and merlin here. i don't like it at all

HOW DOES MERLIN DO THE HANDSTAND?? that's the one part i like

ok my question is how is he supposed to know where the last piece of the triskeleton is??

SECOND QUESTION WHY IS HE JUST STANDING IN THE VAULT WHEN HE SHOULD BE RUNNING

lasflkajsdljsad omg the betrayal. ouch my heart

these scene are just like. it's actually art

ok how did merlin stay there all night and no one saw him?? literally camelot guards need to step up

omg no not merlin zooming

sklfja;lsdkjfasdlfs amerlin and the cup

i love how long merlin and arthur look at each other before arthur reacts

lsjfa;lksdsl woodworm omg and the fact that arthur believes that merlin is this chaotic is so funny

HAHA THIS SCENE GAIUS LITERALLY YELLING AT MERLIN

i think this is the funniest thing because gaius is like 'don't people about your magic' while YELLING ABOUT MERLIN'S MAGIC

ok that's a good point gaius we don't know what borden's intentions are

alsdjfalsd stop why didn't they wait for merlin :,(. this reminds me of when you're in highschool and you're finishing lunch and as you pack up everyone is leaving you??????

ok but i love that merlin rides in front with arthur. like- of course he does

merlin being observant 😍😍

i want to go horse riding now

STOP I DON'T LIKE THIS

THIS KNIGHT/DINNER GAG IS NOT FUNNY TO ME. NOT IN THE SLIGHTLEST. THERE'S THIS FIC by @a-small-batch-of-dragons. i literally spent like 10 minutes looking for it because i had to include it here

this scene just.. i don't like it. i never have and i never will

like- who decided that putting this scene in here would be good. no thanks

the knights sleeping in a circle and merlin sleeping on the outside. idk bro that made me a little sad

but also. i want a cloak please. i think i'm just going to say i want a cloak every episode

ok i chuckled at the interaction of 'ever herd of the word sorry?' and 'no is it a word you made up?'

dude don't ask why but i love it when people walk through waterfalls

i don't know why arthur looked so stupid when he was doing it though

i love the nature of it all

yes merlin, you start walking toward the castle first

aw i love the knights working together. like, i know they work together- they're knights, but we love to see it

merlin and his sharp eyes again :,))

why are they making camp it's literally not even dark yet 😭😭

oh great another dinner gag. please stop. i dislike this immensely

wow i love that merlin can heal them. i also think it's surprising because merlin sucks at healing things but yk.. ✨plot✨

this looks like the type of building teens would either be convinced is haunted and try to stay the night there or the type of building that all teens would go to to take pics for the #gram

ok is borden dead here or..

yes i'm putting both of these picture here. who's going to stop me

just kidding it's three

ok so not dead

ok this is not meant to be creepy but colin has nice hands

borden is a creep please go away now

merlin use your ✨magic ✨ please

YES. tell him you're the last dragonlord. i stan. YES HIM AND HIS MAGIC

you better run boy

ok how he manages to get out of the castle is astounding

HAHA there was some CGI that fell and i laughed so hard because it looked so fake

LITERALLY. THE PRETTY CASTLE SCENE IS HERE AGAIN. PRETTY CASTLE SCENE COUNTER; 3

omg merlin getting excited about the egg is actually so precious

both of their faces here are SO precious.

oasfasldfjasl idk why but whenever merlin walks across with the eggs i have this feeling he's going to faceplant and drop it for the comedic effect but i'm glad that never happens

bruh 'back where it belongs' like yes that makes sense but also that doesn't make sense

dude

it's been a full moon for like 4 days now..??????

omg i actually love aithusa

tbh, i DO NOT know how to pronounce her name

why is she actually the cutest thing ever.

AW MERLIN CRYING

i love it when merlin cries, but not in a sadistic way yk? it's more the fact that he's allowed to cry

ok i have a few dragon fics that i love but the only one i can think of right now is Returning the Favor by CaffeinatedFlumadiddle it's actually perfect

there are so many more that i love but i can't think of them but also- PLEASE REC YOUR FAVE DRAGON FAMILY DOMESTIC FICS PLEASE AND THANK YOU

anyways. i'll be back tomorrow to rant more about the darkest hr pt 2 so i'll see you then! also let me know if you want me to stop tagging you @lady-ofmagic-andstars because otherwise i will literally tag you in everything :,)

[lailababar]

10 years ago I was home for the holidays and on my way from Lahore to Sheikhupura. My driver Shahzad was driving the car. We were driving fast because it late at night, the roads were empty, and we were young. A car started driving alongside us, matching our speed. We would go faster and they would catch up. And then they started flashing their lights at our car. When we did not stop the car, they tried to overtake us, and when that didn’t work, at 100 km/hr, they hit the rear of the car so that their car was wedged into ours. Then they started braking making our car slow down too. Once we were slowed, they overtook us and parked their car diagonally across ours so we could not escape. 4 men came out. It was like a scene from a bad Bollywood movie. 4 doors opening, 4 men stepping out, in my memory the time slowed down and every detail left an impression. 2 had rifles. They held them with both hands, and flanked the other two men. I recall this night perfectly because it is always playing, over and over, in my head. A loop recording from hell. One man rapped on Shahzad’s window, and when he refused to open the door they pulled out their guns and rapped again, this time with the butt of their pistols. Shahzad has told me to try to lay low on the backseat. He was in his 20s. I was 17. (When I look back on this I’m shocked that we were so young, but then again, you grow up fast when you grow up afraid). I did not have credit in my phone. I couldn’t make a phone call. I found his phone and called his brother. I didn’t know exactly where we were, I didn’t know how far from Lahore or how close to Sheikhupura. I was afraid and trying to find details in the dark. I had a blackberry and the BBM messenger was on. I messaged my cousin Sherdil on it and blissfully he replied. The sheer fear I had in this moment will never leave my body. I know myself as pre fear and post fear. I told him we had been stopped by 4 armed men. That they were talking to shahzad but it looked grim. He said he’ll send police officers out to look for us. We both knew the police would be too late, the details I had given were so vague.

I remember thinking of what I would do when the men had me. I had notions of bartering, of asking, pleasing, begging, them to not rape me in exchange for any amount of money they wanted. It’s odd how even in the worst moments of your life, you have time to imagine it being even worse. And then I heard a ‘thunk’. They had slammed shahzad into the car window with just enough force to convey their intentions. And then one of them said the sentence that haunts my every waking moment “bachi aur gari de do, tumhare se Kuch nai chahye”. Give us the girl and the car, we don’t need anything from you. They had a gun to Shahzad’s temple. And I was sitting helpless in the backseat of my car refusing to let panic set in. Refusing to show fear, never mind that I was alone. I heard Shahzad’s voice clear as day ‘nahin’ (no). The man hit him with the butt of his pistol and suddenly there were gunshots in the air.

This is the point where the panic seeped into my bones. I didn’t know what would happen next. And I hate the theory that there are infinite alternate universes and each of them have different outcomes for every scenario. I kept flirting between the present and a make believe future. Suddenly the car door opened. It took me a few seconds to realise it was Shahzad. My legs were shaking, my hands had tremors. He sat down, locked the car, and asked if I was okay. He joked about me looking afraid and I let out a nervous laugh and said no I’m not. When I looked outside there were a hundred people around our car. Some local man had had a few burglaries so he was on high alert for thieves. When he heard some commotion near his house he came out and thought his house was about to be robbed. And so he shot at us. The men who had stopped us thought it was our back up and got into their cars and sped away. And suddenly the whole neighbourhood woke up and was on the road. I had wanted to drive out of that area within seconds. Shahzad explained to me that those men could be waiting ahead to attack again so we had to sit and wait for 15 minutes. Enough time to have them get bored. To clear our path. Those 15 minutes were agony personified. It took every inch of my self control to not show fear, I’m sure I looked afraid, but I tried so hard to not show it.

And you know what my take away was back then? I’m so lucky. Lucky to have escaped. Lucky that that man thought he was being robbed. Lucky that there was no crossfire. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. And I was partially right, I was luckier than most. Definitely luckier than the woman who needed petrol on the motor way. (This incident was on the GT road btw, so CCPO sahab can fuck off with that). But you know what, as women are options shouldn’t just be terrified or broken. I was not lucky to have had men chase down my car and try to kidnap me. I was not lucky to worry about being raped when I was 17. I was not lucky to be in a country where basic safety is not just not guaranteed but it’s considered unnecessary. I was not lucky to have known that my clothes, the fact that I was in Pajamas would be talked about more than the men who were attacking me. I was not lucky to have been scared so bad, so early. I fared better than my counterpart did yesterday, this news story could’ve been broken 10 years ago with blurred pictures of my face. It was a miracle I survived. But I was not lucky to have been in that situation. And I hate that I cannot escape that night. Not even in my sleep.

I am still afraid of that road. I’m also afraid of dark roads. Im afraid when cars tailgate me on the highway. I am afraid when I notice the same car in my rear view mirror for more than 5 minutes. I’m afraid so often that it’s just another facet of my being. This happened 10 years ago and i am still afraid. And I am not alone. So many women have near miss stories, so many of us get followed home by men, so many of us have had to drive slower or faster to shake off the awful cretins that are Pakistani men. And we are all afraid. 50% of your population lives in perpetual fear. Does that not worry you?

I don’t want men calling for death penalties or stricter laws, the laws are strict, you just don’t implement them. I want men to worry about every word that leaves their mouth. I want them to think and rethink their sentences, weigh them against their guilt. I want all men to look at themselves like I did that night. Analyse your life to see what all you did to contribute to rape culture. Do you know even today I think I might have invited that attack. I was so ashamed to show fear because I believed that I had done something, laughed while looking at their car, or had my windows down, or something, to entice them. When we march, don’t play devil’s advocate. There is no dignity in contributing further to the plight of those already marginalised. Instead play our advocate. Use your arguments to fight with your male friends when they minimise rape, when they objectify women. Talk to each other and the women in your life about how you have contributed to life being harder for us. Don’t get salty about #menaretrash, instead understand that women are afraid. We have been for our whole lives. Your discomfort is not oppression. Be better and if you have harassers and rapists in your friends group, and we all know you do, call them out, refuse to associate with them, or at the very least don’t give them awards for bravery *ahem* ALIZAFAR *ahem*. Basically try and make life just a little bit easier for women, god knows we need it.

[alpacannot]

So, I’m finally getting around to rewriting my Reaper Saga books, with the newly renamed “Reaper”. The past, like, four times I’ve tried to rewrite this book, I’ve always stuck with the same general opening chapter, introducing Tris, her work, and the other characters fairly quickly, allowing them to talk about themselves. This time, I’ve tried for a slightly different approach, which I like more. It took me forever to write it though, partly because I’m rusty (I haven’t written anything fiction related since 2016) and partly because I just wanted to skip to the good stuff. It was tempting to just copy in the original prologue, but I’m super pleased with how this new first chapter is starting. It’s not done, and I haven’t proofed it yet, but I was so excited that I just had to share it. So, without further ado, here’s the first, unedited bit of “Reaper” chapter 1:

“Tristan Sieghard—for crimes against humanity and for exposing the Afterlife, we, the Highers and the Gatekeeper, sentence you to death and eternal damnation in the deepest pits of Hell.” The Highest’s voice echoed throughout the assembly hall as several Runners drug her away from the crowd gathered inside the seemingly far-too-small room. Alex avoided her gaze, his brows pinching together. She wanted to shout out, “You could have stopped this!”, but she knew that she had chosen this. It was her neglect that ultimately caused her downfall. But, at least she was brave enough to act, to seek out justice for their daughter. He was by far the worse parent, choosing to do nothing.

******

I awoke with a jolt, sitting bolt upright and drenched in sweat. The same nightmare haunted me, the screeching of tires across asphalt ringing in my ears. My throat was raw from screaming. Glancing to my right, three blinking red numbers drilled into my eyes—4:27 a.m. “Fantastic,” I muttered, dragging myself out of bed and untangling the mess of slightly damp covers from around my legs. My mouth was dry, and my tongue felt like lead. Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, I forced myself into the shower, letting the scalding water beat against my back. No pain was enough to drag me into reality though. I sat there, dead to the world, until the water ran cold, after which I pushed myself up and out.

I coiled my curls on top of my head, giving up on looking presentable. The dark bags under my eyes said what my mouth couldn’t: I wasn’t well. I grimaced at my reflection, at my body’s betrayal. Stumbling towards my closet, my numb fingers clutched at my work clothes: black and white and garish red. I looked like a corpse every day, which was ironic considering I spent every working hour turning other people into corpses. As I fumbled with the buttons, I tried once again to desperately return to reality, but the memories clouded my eyes, refusing to let me escape.

Realizing that the day was already a loss but determined to earn my keep in some way, I gradually made my way to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and left my apartment. Locking my door presented everlasting problems for my still unresponsive hands, but I eventually managed to secure my door. Stopping to collect myself once more, I reveled in the silence of the hall. Still, my peace was short lived as the muffled sounds of music rang out from the adjacent apartment. I longed for the effortlessness with which PJ lived his carefree life. I knew that it hadn’t come easy to him—after all, he hadn’t always been this unburdened. He, too, had had his fair share of trauma and regrets. It seemed like everyone here did.

Trudging down the endless, blank hallways, I finally arrived at the front of my department. The room was virtually empty, save the night security guard, who was unsurprised to see me. He barely glanced up from his book, nodded in my direction, and continued reading. It wasn’t unusual for me to be in the office during the wee hours of the morning. The first few days, he was suspicious, but as the days turned into weeks, he stopped commenting on my odd hours. Always the first to arrive and the last to leave—not because I was an overachiever, but because work was safe. When I went home, my mind was cut lose, free to torment me.

I flicked on the lights, illuminating the long stretch of cubicles. Even during normal working hours, the desks were usually devoid of people—overflowing with paperwork, but not a single living soul in sight. I ruffled through the stack of reports on my desk, mostly reference files that had yet to be signed off and returned to the Keepers. Grabbing my pen, I began to furiously sign any remaining legal work, tucking the death certificates in the back of their respective manilla folders. Neatly stacking the completed files in the outgoing basket on my desk, I rang for a Runner and sat back as I waited for their arrival. As expected, they were waiting in front of my desk in a matter of seconds.

“Two Pink Card files today. The rest are all Blue Card.” The Runner nodded and whisked away the folders, disappearing from view in a flurry of fabric and papers. I ran a hand through the tangle of still-damp curls that had slowly begun their escape from the knot on the top of my head. Now what am I going to do? The new files won’t come in for another hour at least, I thought. As if on cue, Alex came striding through the glass doors.

“Another early day?” he asked, as if this wasn’t a common occurrence.

“Of course. Just like every other day.” With an unusual grace for someone so large, he sat on my now empty desk, folding his long legs. He took up the whole space, making my already cramped office even tinier. I had never felt more miniscule. His long, thin fingers tapped rhythmically on his biceps, drawing attention to the muscles there. If I didn’t know him better, I would have thought he was trying to intimidate me.

“What about you? What are you doing here so early, Alex?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“You know, the usual. Pink Card Keepers never rest.”

I choked back a laugh, but it sounded like a strangled animal. “Are you kidding? Pink Cards only cover what Yellow and Blue Cards don’t, which has been like next to nothing these days.” His eyes tightened at the corners—I’d struck a nerve for sure. Just like that, he relaxed, returning to his usual joking self.

“Well, I was called in early this morning—two new Pink Card only files were brought in a few minutes ago. I wonder who could have sent them in?” I feigned innocence, but I felt bad for waking him up. I wasn’t sure why those files couldn’t wait until normal hours. I had just assumed that they’d wait on someone’s desk until everyone else clocked in.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t know they would wake you up for them—they’ve never done that before?”

“It’s fine. You know how anxious they are to get Pink Card work wrapped up, especially dangerous people like those two. The sooner the paperwork is done, the sooner HR can get them in Hell and away from all the innocent souls.” He paused, waiting for me to react, but my numb brain wasn’t truly processing anything. “Well, I better get to work then. Those files aren’t going to seal themselves.” With that, he turned to leave. At the double doors, he stopped, looked back, and winked at me before continuing on his way.

Hours later, other Reapers started filing in. Today’s files were brought by the Runners, although I’d barely noticed them. Honestly, the Runners were like phantoms—there one minute and gone the next. Opening the first packet, I skimmed over the list of humans I would be Reaping today: Bethany Jones—Blue Card, Amanda Howard—Blue Card, Lydia Ramirez—Yellow Card. The list went on and on. No one in particular stood out to me, and I grimaced—today’s Reaping wouldn’t take me but a few hours. I would be home alone with my thoughts for a majority of the work day.

PJ strode in, interrupting my stream of melancholy thoughts. His curly hair was slightly disheveled, a lazy smile on his face. “Whatcha’ think about today’s Reapings?” he asked.

PJ was in charge of assembling the list of Reapings and preparing the proper paperwork—as long as the files were within his level of clearance. PJ was relatively new to this work still, stagnating at Blue Card Keeper since graduation. Together with Chris, my designated Yellow Card Keeper, and Alex, PJ was my behind-the-scenes crew. On the off chance that I worked extended assignments on Earth, he got to read my reports and add them to that person’s file, but I hadn’t worked an extended assignment in years. In fact, I wasn’t sure PJ ever saw the other’s when prepping my work. During extended assignments, he would work closely with Chris, but I wasn’t sure the two had ever actually met before. In fact, I hardly ever saw Chris.

PJ snapped his fingers at me, drawing me from my internal monologue. “Are you listening? I asked what you thought about today’s Reapings.” I shook my head, forcing myself to focus.

“I’m a little bummed out actually. I don’t see anything that will keep me working for very long today, so I’ll be going home early. Which I know sounds great to you considering you’ll be here late working on the files because almost all of them are Blue Card, but it’s a real downer for me,” I explained when I saw him opening his mouth to protest. He grinned at me.

“You owe me. Dinner tonight. Your place. I want to talk to you about this new guy I met the other day!”

“If it’s a new love interest, I’d love to hear about it, although I’m a little miffed about cooking. However, since it’s a short day for me, I suppose I can make dinner tonight. Now get out of here—I have work to do, and so do you.” I playfully swatted at him. PJ always brought out the best in me and made it easier for me to shake off my early morning melancholy.

“See you tonight!” he called out as he all but skipped through the doors.

[iamnotthedog]

CHICAGO: OCTOBER 24, 2012

I want to touch a glacier. I want to feel its weight under me. I want to press my hands to it and have the water running under my skin remind me in the most tangible way possible that everything is impermanent. I want to see it disappearing with my own eyes. I want to stare into its blinding whiteness and feel its resolve.

I need to get back to the Olympic Peninsula.1  I need to drive along its shores, sit on its beaches, hike through its mountains, wander aimlessly under its trees. I need to experience it the same way I did during that summer of 2001. There is something about that area of the country that has stuck with me since that summer—something that won’t stop haunting me until I see it again.

I woke up again last night, right around five o’clock in the morning, and I ended up just wandering around our little apartment and the enclosed, rat-infested square of grass outside, smoking cigarettes and thinking about things until the sun came up. As for what woke me up, it was a dream—a dream I’ve had several times now.

In the dream, I wake up on a Greyhound bus in the Pacific Northwest. The bus is slowly rolling northward along the Puget Sound, through the mountainous region on the eastern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. The land flattens out as we reached the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with towering pine trees jutting up into a claustrophobic gray sky. It isn’t raining, but the air is wet with the perennial haze forever associated with that area of the country.

We pull into a Burger King parking lot, it’s giant, lustrous hamburger glowing through the mist.

The bus driver calls out: “Half hour!”

I rub my hands over my face and through my hair, and slip on my Converse. I step off of the bus and into the moisture and look down at the rain-glossed lines on the pavement as my fellow passengers file sleepily into the obnoxious fluorescent light. As I stand there, lethargic and confused, I become overwhelmed with a feeling of familiarity, like the hand that grabs the back of your mind and gives a squeeze when you smell a place you haven’t been for years. I lift my eyes from the parking lot to the restaurant, and then to the foothills gradually bowing into looming mountains beyond. There is a dirt path on the left side of the building that trails off into the woods. The path curves around the back of the restaurant, past chained rear doors and barrels stuffed with broken cardboard and wax boxes. The smell of burgers and fries and American cheese lingers somewhere near the center of the noxious smell emanating from a few dumpsters. The path then veers to the left, points straight through the swaying, ethereal pines for about twenty paces, and comes to a hill. On the hill stands a log cabin with a large front porch. A weathered upright piano sits on the right side of the porch. The front door is open.

Ten steps up the hill, two steps up to the porch, and I stand at the threshold. A rock wells up in my heart and slowly slides its way up into my esophagus. I am scared, but not too scared to turn back. I rap on the open door and step in.

The room is small and lit by a single light fixture in the center of the ceiling. To my left, a dark and empty doorway, straight ahead a dresser on which sits a wooden bowl and a framed picture of a young boy. To my right, lying face down on a small bed, is a naked woman, the ivory skin of her delicate neck, shoulders, back, ass, thighs, the backs of her knees, her calves, the bottoms of her feet all fully exposed. Her arms rest under a puffy white pillow that supports her head of curly brown hair. Her head moves slightly on the pillow, and then she pushes herself up on her elbows and turns to look at me.

Her face is like the picture in a movie theater when the reel on a film projector slows—I see multiple faces—each sliding by, one by one. The woman is everyone I’ve ever known. I feel an overwhelming feeling of comfort and acceptance, and let out a breath that seems to come from outside—it starts in the roots of the trees, is pulled up through the branches, and falls with the rain. I see that all happen as I breathe. I suddenly want to lie with this woman and feel her skin against mine. I want to melt into her.

The woman smiles—her multiple faces smile, each with their different wrinkles and lines, the different shapes of their eyes, the different curves of their lips—but she doesn’t say a word. I take another breath, preparing to speak, but this breath comes from inside the room, and brings with it the stink of reality.

Behind me, I hear the opening of a door, and the words “Hello, Dan.”

I turn and find myself face-to-face with Don. He is much older. An old man, in fact. All pale, wrinkled skin and grey hair. He is wearing nothing but a bath towel around his waist. For some reason, he frightens the hell out of me.

“Welcome,” he says. He pats me on the back and smiles, and I relax a bit. Maybe I’m not about to be brutally murdered, after all. Don’s smile says, “I’m here. You’re here. We’ve aged. Time happens. I have nothing to hide.”

He brushes past me and sits next to the woman on the bed. I look at her again, bending over at the waist to really get a good look at her face, or faces. Is she my mother?

Don’s voice suddenly sounds very scholarly and serious. “You are not Oedipus.”

He laughs.

I step back, away from the bed, and watch Don as he kneels on the wood floor and grabs a newspaper from under the bed. Standing and holding it out to me, he points to a picture. It’s a school portrait of a young man I knew in high school, or multiple young men I knew in high school—again, the faces flicker and roll by—all of them acquaintances I never had real conversations with, but ate lunch with in the cafeteria, sat next to in classrooms, ran with on the track around the football field.

“So much potential,” Don says, pulling the newspaper back before I can see what the article is about. I look down at the woman on the bed, who appears to have fallen asleep.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

Don tosses the newspaper on the dresser and says, “They’re all ghosts.” He turns his back to me and opens the dresser drawer. “Nothing is permanent.” I notice for the first time that the portrait in the frame on the dresser is of me, as a little boy. I’ve got a blonde bowl cut, and those big plastic-framed glasses, bigger than my face. To my right, on the bed, the woman has rolled over in her sleep. At my back, a breeze comes through the door that I had carelessly left open, bringing the smell of rain. The breeze rustles the pines and causes water to fall on the roof of the porch in loud, thwacking drops. There is a rumble of distant thunder. Don has a t-shirt and underwear in one hand, rolled up socks under his arm, and a pair of khakis with the belt still looped around the waist in his other hand. He shuffles into the bathroom and I see the blurry reflection of his face on the steamy bathroom mirror above the sink before he shuts the door behind him.

I look down at the woman on the bed one more time: the curve of her back, the lift of her exposed hip. Then I step out of the cabin onto the porch through the open door. 

Standing there on the porch, I look out through the mist. Everything in my immediate view seems to be in motion. Just beyond the grassy hill sloping down to the dark woods, towering pine trees sway back and forth. Just beyond the rocking pine trees is a gigantic mountain, bluish-white. It is a glacier—a solid sheet of ice—but even it isn’t unmoving. It is heaving eastward, away from the cabin, away from the Pacific Northwest and back over the Great Plains towards Illinois, heaving like the ocean, it’s glassy-but-opaque, moonlit surface curling, then receding, curling, then receding.

The whole scene makes me a little seasick, so I turn away from all that and sit at the piano. It smells of wet wood, an almost woolly smell, and the more keys I press, the stronger the smell becomes. Most of the keys work, but a few stick when pressed, and others press together two at a time, like fingers bound together in a splint.

Don emerges from the cabin in his standard uniform—a buttoned-up, subtly-striped white shirt over a white t-shirt, tucked into khaki pants with a black belt and black leather shoes. Everything worn and faded, like he hasn’t bought anything new for years. His hair is parted on his left and swooped over his tall forehead to the right. His eyes are glistening behind the thick lenses of his wire-framed glasses.

“How long have you been here?” I ask him. But he doesn’t reply. I plunk out “London Bridge is Falling Down” on the piano, and take a long drag of a cigarette. Where the cigarette came from, I’m not exactly sure, but it burns my lungs and makes me cough—I always cough, every time, then I start to wake from the dream.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Don says.

I can feel myself slipping away, and I don’t really want to. I want to stay right there, on that porch. I want to talk to him, and find out who that woman on the bed is.

“Your grandfather died of emphysema.”

For some reason, this comment makes him smile.

 The Olympic Mountains, which lie right in the wild and unpopulated center of the Olympic Peninsula, are one of the few places left on Earth that are still home to hundreds of glaciers. It can’t be certain how true that statement is today, though—as the Earth’s climate warms, glaciers melt, and comparing aerial photos taken from the late 1970s to 2009, researchers found that glacier surface area in the Olympic Mountains decreased by almost a third. Anderson Glacier—one of the only glaciers in the park accessible by trail—is one-tenth of the size it was in 1927. Mountains of ice that have shaped the Olympic Mountains for thousands of years are disappearing in mere decades, and bears, elk, cougars, steelhead and salmon—every living thing down to the tiny ice worms found only in glacial ice—are suffering as a result. ↩︎