The little one.
I went into my mind today and it made me cry.
On my journey, I walked past an old city I built and it was decimated. Wisps of charcoal swirled as I strode past, stirring up remains. I stopped to watch as shapes of black, no, people covered in soot, dragged in scaffolding slowly. They were building a new foundation warily. How their lungs could handle the laborious motion when the air was still dense from whatever disaster had put them in this position made me uncertain. I don’t believe a fortress would take its place at this rate. No, instead perhaps a few humble homesteads would do. Nothing too glamorous, willing to relocate if need be. I sent a silent prayer for the uncertainty those families would face.
A part of me wanted to leave after that, but a certain dread kept me there longer. I ventured toward hostage hill. The landscape metamorphosed even though my feet found solidity to push off. Before me, a front desk appeared. “Can you direct me toward the infirmary? But first, the prisoners,” I said to the ether, knowing it would respond with cataclysmic movement upon the infrastructure. Walking past the cells first, I check the chains on Aggression. She gnarls her teeth as I rattle her cage. Nope, still secure. I move on to The Past, chains still dreadfully tight. I approach Fear, but I know the captive is secure, she is nearing purple now. I check the locks of Shame, Regret, and Loss but even they’ve stopped trying to escape. The infirmary materializes. I wear a look of anticipated apology as I approach Mother Worth. No one has lived in captivity as long as she, to ask about the state of her alone feels like crossing a line. “How are your chains? Loose?” She lifts one slow look out her eyes and less with her head, naturally furrowing her brow by the two motions’ contrast. Instantly any attempt of mine to be propitiatory was regarded as meaningless. “You know I’ve been here almost as long as you. We’re nearly the same age,” she said with a tone that was less scornful than I had expected, and had I heard pity? “I think you should know by now that I will die in this place. That isn’t of course, to say that you haven’t anything to worry about.” She unwraps the mound that sat unnaturally upon her belly. She wasn’t presently pregnant, instead lay a child at Mother Worth’s waist, on the other side of the flesh that bore it, I thought. What a weird way to reveal this little secret. Of everything I knew about her, I didn’t know possessing a dramatic flair was one of them. And then the realization took place. She understood as much as I that in virtue of that child having exited her world and entering ours, the fortune read differently. This child was free. Drama in its presentation was altogether necessary. For the next few years, the two of them had the privileges that free people so often have: shamelessness, courage, to love and be loved, joy. The will of it, and the means to execute it.
And then one day, something came along and ordered Worth to be put back in her cell.
And so when I returned and found the workers building more walls and embracing the business, it took me a while to find Mother Worth and her daughter far off from the town, running and laughing, spinning and embracing. This child, a product of free life, did not belong here. When it came to, I pressed the lock, rending Mother Worth to the floor of her cell once again. Here I was stuck with this little thing with which I had no clue how to infuse confidence. “You’re to keep running, keep spinning, keep laughing. Don’t let the shelters you pass fool you for homes, they are prisons. You will be tested by this often. But freedom will come from learning to tilt your head back into the rain and drink from it, instead of learning to hunch your shoulders and leave you with a shivering spine to deal with later.”
And just before I left her, just before I broke the surface, the tears did, our tears.