©2021

bereshith : : in the beginning

There was, as there is with all things, a beginning. But, she couldn’t exactly remember where, or when that was now; nor how far she, and the group had navigated from that point of origin. Someone had led the way. Until they could no longer and it had fallen to her to take over.
The developing seriousness of their situation was certainly no justification for being so woefully ignorant. But as is often the case if one is unaware of a tsunami’s approach, one tends to allow one’ self to drift. Until it’s too late to take appropriate protective measures.

That they had reached a certain waypoint now, dawned slowly on them.
The awareness that the mounting evidence was like a glistening stone breaking through the crystalline ice of last night’s storm – as the reality and the attendant fears revealed themselves

To most of the others  the realization was slow in arriving.
Not having the benefit of knowledge or the recognition of any kind of a sign, the others had kinda meandered along, following her lead. In a slightly drunk force of movement, as unpredictable as flotsam, their course seemed to be not so defined by a timetable as it was by rather a pulsating magnetic pull. She attempted to provide a skeleton of a possible explanation, a plausible frame of understanding that the others might see, that they might clutch in a somnolent desire to make some sense from the fragments of the scant facts available.

It was becoming, uncomfortable. It was, like the very first tiny bubbles of steam air that broke the tension of the surface of the water as the boiling point approached.

As a group, they had now, only themselves. Their last communication, riddled and popping with static, had produced only a sporadic spit of words, of bits and pieces of phrases from which she, and a couple of the rest had attempted to fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle.

A mention of elusive wildlife.  The reference to remote caves, unknown origins.
She recognized, and attempted to help others to realize, all they could discern from the staccato of that last transmission was that a new and frighteningly clever panic was afoot, that cautionary measures needed to be observed.

The solar winds had drowned out subsequent information.  A word, or two – what she, and others she trusted thought – might be tokens, flitted amongst the thinning air space. A feeling that she alone understood – that isolation was an important part of the verbal conveyance served to confuse her further.

Found herself wondering, muttering aloud, ‘How much more isolated could we possibly be?’

The others were feeling, she was quite certain, a sort of ennui – a lassitude which generally results in times of deep uncertainty.

Any advancement along the thread of their path should probably be mitigated by the little they had figured out.
But how, and in what way might it be a beacon? It surely could not be, in its partiality, a compass of any kind.

Was it now their duty, their responsibility, as unwilling leaders, to find a way to be more pro-active in this journey? Towards a dark destination, only vaguely defined, that might provide the comfort of confidence – a confidence that they had long ago discarded.

It was not a question that either she – nor any of the rest of the group, were qualified to ask.
For they had no rights of leadership. They had no destiny but to continue forward, to forge a path of a sort amongst the shadows of that unknown.

The hollow comfort of destiny.

Was that, just there, just now, a light?

A light, perhaps, of reason.

Tsum suf, ‘at the end’ — in an inky black script on a midnight black background it may become prophetic.

But as she gazed out into the void, across to the far horizon, the spark  seen there on the very rim, had her asking,

‘Might that be, the light of reason?’

©michael moore 2020