Stream of Fish
43
His frail body shuddered at the touch of the stream as it grazed his ankles en route to a village far beyond. He inhaled the sweet air of an autumn morning and closed his eyes in meditation as schools of fish rushed past his body, acknowledging his existence before saying their goodbye. “All they know is that they are underwater,” he thought. Was all he knew being above it? He ate and drank and breathed as fish did. Despite his efforts for comfort, his life was survival. So he greeted the fish as if they were his brothers. As if they shared consciousness, the subtle touch they shared affirming their familial ties. The bare earth reached for his backside and pulled his body to the muddy creekside. He felt the mud begin to stain his pants and he sunk deeper, reassuring the Earth that he enjoyed its imprint. He thought of the hut that held his sleeping mat. The rolling hills of thick forest that ascended behind it, masquerading his place of residence with the enormity of the Earth. He let the thought go. He glanced at his village in the distance. The faint sound of busy noisiness tickled his eardrums and he smiled. They had occupied this valley region long before even his mother and father were born. His connection was far deeper than man and place. His heart tied to all who entered the village, all who kept its existence intact. The muddy roads and bamboo huts affirmed the roots that grounded their souls together, suffering through years of drought and decay. He let the thought go. He sent a prayer into the universe and allowed his shoulders to rise and his spine to leave its curl and stand at attention as a military man would. He felt the rumblings in his stomach cease, as his body was filled with different nutrition. He inhaled the misty air, pausing to appreciate its serenity as it rushed through his skin like a virus. It tingled his fingertips as it left his body and re-entered the space before him with an exhale. His mind lost its need to reason in the tranquility of the air and the stickiness of the mud. It dragged him into the Earth, allowing him to rest for a moment beneath the man-ruled world that never stopped turning— frozen in space. The famine that plagued his village, the loss of his parents, his inability to grow food, his inability to start a family; they reached the walls of his hippocampus and dared not enter a war with the sleeping, powerful mind. Then his ears resisted, only for a moment, as they pricked up as a rabbit’s does. He felt sweat perspire on his forehead as he hurried to forgive the Earth for his ungrateful resistance to this Nirvana he was offered. His ears began to ring and soon it occupied his skull, pulsating down his neck and causing his eyes to throb and wobble within their lids. The sound of an unnatural thunder crashing within the main road of his village. “Please forgive me, dear Earth. Please allow me to come again. I will not betray you once more.” But the ground became stickier, and the stream panicked, rushing its water with an abrasive force. The fish did not seem to swim anymore, but instead tossed and wriggled with the current that pulled them.
SHORT STORIES
JOSH MEGSON
