Seven Days of Silence (might not be enough)

...

Not so much as being shunned. Gossip flies faster when fueled by falsehood. Beware, the gentle can be pushed too far. The sting thats hardly used is that much sharper for its practiced caution.

Its easier to tread the shallow waters, but the addictive freedom of depths anew is undertow; the ride exhilarates but holding the breath is mortally taxing.


...


An explorer chanced upon a secluded forest, and became so enchanted by the trees that he didn't realize he was scaring the woodland creatures. Woe to the traveler, for he seeks a companion of comparable compatibility, but must hide his excitement, lest the wary creatures skirt him endlessly. Seeking to provide warmth and safety, the traveler built a fire, but mistook wet wood for a lack of fuel, and in his earnest gallantry snuffed what flame he had sparked.

With no fire and no comfort, the man found himself blanketed only with night. Much past a point for silent pleading with invisible forces, he instead wondered at whether independence was the seed or fruit of his mistakes. Surely he had become strong enough to weather consequences, but deeper down he felt trouble could be avoided if he had somehow noticed more than he did before. Aware that pondering the past for too long was a danger of being trapped by it, and looking too far into the future abandons the present, he allowed sleep to shelter him away from his problems.

As he lay there the man dreamt he was a sea, endlessly aware of all motion in his ocean. His peace of flowing freedom was quickly interrupted by a weight above him, nay just the notion of a weight above him. A subtle but obtrusive force; so shocked was he at not being alone he could do no more than train his concentration onto locating whatever it was. Had he eyes he was sure they'd be wide with fright; he was frightened of sea monsters and the like, regardless of being an ocean, which was still taking some getting used to. The gentle presence rang like a bell, a song singing to him, and he felt some response within his own waters; a resonance ringing in some part of his construct that had lay dormant, unbeknownst to him 'til now. Surprise languished to his curiosity, and he pushed his consciousness towards the foreign. No sooner had he decided to move in a direction than he found himself upon an island of one single mountain, floating upon his sea and brushing against the ever unreachable sky.

The island seemed at first rather small compared to his own vastness, but despite the man's depth as an ocean he could reach no higher than the lowest beach here. He was awash with desire and curiosity, everything this island was were things that he was not! Stoic cliffs remained steadfast in their majesty, an alien phenomenon to his perpetual turbulence. The idea of even touching the clouds would never have occurred to the man as an ocean, had he not seen the mountain doing it right in front him. Without a moment to lose he searched for an opening, wishing to understand this mountain more, but found no rivers to access, no outlets that might lead to a mysterious interior. In his search he found that he could hold the island in its entirety, and that its shape was pleasing. Fluttering butterflies welled in a non-existent stomach, confusing him. This island and the connection that he was building with it had all come upon him rather suddenly. He paused to think, wrapping himself around this silent stranger, hoping its stillness would help calm him, when a small quake shook from within the mountain.


Caught unaware from the once motionless mountain's sudden jarring, he didn't even think of retreating. His introspective questioning slipped away into awe; awe that inspired fear in the man as the island shook for a second time. He slipped from his repose around the isle, watching as ripples traveled throughout his entirety, waves that swam to each horizon, and he too quivered, though from fear. How could such a tiny island shake him, an ocean that reached from sunrise to sunset? Why was it shaking anyways? How could peace have escaped so quickly after he had only just discovered it?

Frustrated with the sudden quaking, and limited by his male understanding, he sought to appease the island with gifts. Piling fish upon the shores did nothing, calling whales to sing a song made no less the trembling. It never quite occurred to him to sit back and watch, he was an ocean after all and as long as he was doing something he might be getting somewhere. Only frozen oceans sat motionless. He was much too preoccupied with feeling inadequate anyways. Self-confidence was slipping to self-criticality, and what if the island revealed some answer to his questions while he was too far away to see it? Oh no! Rationality drove him to cool off, retreat, and rethink the situation. Irrationality spurned him to action, the threat of further shaking too much for him to not try and do something or sit around ignoring it.

But despite his efforts the mountain didn't stop its sporadic quaking, and in his frustration the man imagined it was increasing ever as he failed to stop it. Panicking in the face of the perceived threat, he drew himself together, threw himself up high and came crashing down upon the beach, seeking to achieve some victory over the threating island, but he only broke on the rocks and achieved nothing more than getting them wet, something the quakeful mountain seemed unabated by. Slowly soured with disappointment as his assertions were thwarted so indiscriminately, the mix of emotions welling within him began to loose the chains on his insecurity. His enchantment with the way it felt to hold the island was something he had never felt before, but the incessant tremors and their mysterious origin were too much straw for his camel. He was independent, what was he doing? Why wouldn't things just calm down?

He had only to take care of himself before; he was happy before the island, secure in his capability and hardly questioning himself. Confidence was a solid foundation he normally stood upon, but it had started to sink without him noticing and the cold confusion of self-criticality was creeping up his being. He watched storm clouds building around the mountains peak. Or was that smoke? He couldn't tell, as a man that was dreaming he was a sea he wasn't even sure what smoke was at the moment he thought of it and he just let the idea pass. Previously he was content with being wild and free as an empty sea, but each tremor emitted by the mountain was a jutting reminder of how much he wasn't made to be alone. As he further questioned his aims here, he realized the mountain too seemed unsettled with itself, as if it were a volcano that was trying to be only a mountain. Uncouth in its disharmony, the storm clouded island only furthered the man's discontent. He wished it would make up its mind, but called nothing out loud for he was unsure if undecided mountain-volcanoes took kindly to advice yelled from passersby or if they even heard anything at all. So he left the island behind, trying to ignore the upset from his retreat into the deep, but found that he could still feel the reverberations wherever he tried to go. No escape, he wondered to himself whether he should return to the enrapturing menace above or remain hidden in the depths when he awoke from his dream, and found himself standing on a beach of the same island he had just been dreaming of.



The man looked down and saw his feet sinking into the sand; sand that was freshly wet from what he felt was the ocean that he was just a moment ago. Further investigation into what it meant to be an ocean recently was quickly abandoned as the man raised his head to take in the colossal mountain looming before him. What was once much smaller than he, was now dwarfing him into humility. The vastness of the rock was such that it must have been scraping clouds from the sky, and the man looked back at the ocean in hopes of seeing a safe haven, but the crashing waves only reminded him of the sea of questions he had become whilst abiding in the waters, and so he turned back towards the mountain. It was also quite intimidating, he thought, and also the surest source of all kinds of mystery. But questions were empty without answers, and he had become so involved that he dare not stop now, not even if hope seemed a rare possibility on those towering cliffs. Risks became so much easier to gamble when there was either little to lose or much to gain; and more often than not a tempting stew of the two.

Clouded by the beauty of its majesty but still acutely aware of the inherent danger of awakening a possible volcano, the man strode towards the sordid mix of doom and answers shaking the beach beneath him. All too aware of his diminutive size here on this island, he crept with diligent vigilance, doing his best to avoid what he thought would be instigation of further tremors. In his approach, so caught up was he in caution that he was numb to the damage each footfall inflicted upon the mountain he tread. With each tremble he flinched, but soldiered on with the fortitude that his quest would surely end in peace and not sorely end in pieces.


Sweat glistened on the man's brow, he had lost complete track of time and wondered to himself if he had ever really had a grasp of how much of it was ever passing anyways. He took a moment to glance back the way he had come, and gazing back up at the mountain peak seemingly ages away above him, he surmised he was possibly halfway up at the moment, when as a narrator and author i can assure you that he was not that far up at all, though where he was exactly im unsure.

The man shielded his eyes as he looked heavenward, and held his head with the other hand. He had hoped that time spent back in the shape of a man and not an ocean would give him a vacation from reeling emotions, but the quaking in his belly and the pounding of his heart relinquished no hope of stopping. Flabbergasted that all his capability had thus failed him, even climbing this mountain, which while on the beach seemed like such a good idea, had netted him no answers. The mountain was shaking so hard now he felt it was trying to throw him off completely. And it was, but he had no idea. he didn't even have any idea that he should have had an idea that he might be the source of the problem. He only felt that something had changed since the first quake the island set off and he was determined to figure out what was up. So he ventured forth, growing ever paranoid in his pride, surely that the problem must be something extravagant for him to have missed it this long. Or so he hoped; the idea that the problem was something small and entirely avoidable was so embarrassing that he hoped it was big, even if only to help him sleep at night. And so as a self-fulfilling prophecy the man climbed to the top of the mountain, inadvertantly causing it to squirm and writhe more violently than before. Helpless, the man cried out to the mountain "What? What do you want?"

A squelching hush silenced all noise around the man, he couldn't even hear the waves lapping at the shore. Hairs on his neck prickled up and he suddenly felt as if he were under the baleful gaze of some world shaping deity, when it occurred to him it was the mountain beneath him.

"Stop!!!" Screamed the mountain, its voice blasting from seemingly everywhere at once and flooring the man entirely. Suddenly all sorts of puzzle pieces clicked in his mind; the voice of the mountain that had just thrown him to his back was a woman's.

Before he could put more thought into the appropriateness of the situation, she spoke again, "Stop moving! Get off of me! How did you even get all the way up here? Get off!" And the mountain shook harder than ever, causing the man to completely lose his footing and tumble down the mountain.

"But you drew me here!" replied the man as he slid on rocks and stone, "I came as the sea and you let me hold you, do you not remember?" he managed to come to a stop on some outcropping and awaited her reply. Another quake loosed him from his perch and he struggled to hear her words as he fell further down.

"The sea won't leave me alone!" she cried, "it ever laps at my shores and swirls beneath me! Return to your ocean and take it with you! I wish to be in peace!"

Finally coming to a slowered down slide near the base of the mountain, the man silently wondered how he managed to fall so quickly when it took him so long to climb so high in the first place, but thought better of it before bringing it up. Best not to change the course of a conversation with a mountain, he mused, than risk it blowing its top. So he changed tacts instead.

"But peace is lonesome!" he replied, standing up and facing the mountain, which had managed to retain her majesty but was not obviously bristling as far as the man could tell.

"But you can't drown in peace!" she retorted.

"I feel you quake, every tremor sends a shiver through my being! Why is it that you shake so?" he called out to her.

"You are too close!" she bellowed, and with another series of tremors bounced the man to the tideline.

"but i thought you wanted to be close!" called out the confused man, "how could you let me get so close without telling me?"

"I've been telling you! Every quake, every tiresome vibration was me trying to shake you off! But yet you persist. Leave me be!"

Stunned, the man stood transfixed. The rest of the puzzle he was so eager to solve solidified within him, and realization that he had been the furthering cause of all the local problems fell upon him at once. "Oh." he said, defeated, and he fell back into the sea. It wasn't much of a witty reply, but nothing worthy came to mind.

He was floating no more than a moment before the tide carried him away from the island, and he floated in the waves, gazing at the floating majesty with wonder and embarrassment. He turned away, looking within himself for the reason he didn't figure it out any quicker. He would have surely avoided much trouble had he figured it out faster, but he didn't. Was it too late? Can the earth ever forgive the sea? He was unsure. He felt exactly like a man who had completely shot himself in the foot and there was no taking it back. He had gone from being in the good graces of an enchanting lady, abounding in happiness he had previously unknown, to possibly not even being in the doghouse but ousted outright. Aware that his words and communication were part of the overcrowding, he felt like any apologies or explanations or anything at all would be too much, and he had to do something different. He was sure the island had felt something; something outside of her own inner turmoil he surmised, something towards him. And so that was his gamble; he decided to do what any man told to get at the end of the line does. He decided to wait.

Will she break the silence? Will the floating man get a second chance now that he decided to write this all down as a story in third person? If this is just a story then of course, the island took seven days of silence and let the man back into her life and everybody went dancing.

But if its not a story and its some wacky tale based on recent events in somebody's life, then the total events have yet to pan out and you're going to end up waiting just as long as i do to see what happens.