Mountain rises before me in dwindling sunlight; rolling hills, drawing my very being to it. I am supposed to be here, just like Eagle looking down at us on her way to her nest. Something I recognize, but have not experienced before, rises in my chest, pulling at me, making me long to be here. My gaze rests between the features of the landscape, my heart suddenly beating faster, understanding something my mind cannot yet grasp.
Summer wind plays between deep valleys, bringing the smell of flowers, grass, oxen with her to us. Fox yelps from his hiding spot above us; another answers from far away, Mountain throwing the sound between her tops, echoing.
Soon, colors are having fun, changing quickly from yellow to pink to dark blue in a play with Sky, and draws darkness and the night to our camp. It is time to ask Fire to come and keep us warm through Night.
I listen the silence between the sound of Owl and Mice, and soon sleep, knowing new adventures awaits in the morning.
We built this ship We built it to take on an ocean, to soar through waves, to find new shores
We were cutting down trees, laughing in the sun, bathing in the rain We built this ship, dancing to the sound of chisels and hammers, dreaming in the smell of fresh cut wood
We built and built, thinning the forest and building in the newly opened land The sun were shining through the trees, heating up our new houses We danced on the hot ground, we drank through the cool night
And now I am stranded, alone The night is cold, the sun burns on my skin The trees have gone, my people with them
Sand between my teeth, I scramble for the sails to catch the dry wind That only starts to bury my ship in waves of sand
There is no more to take Now, I walk with what I have
This story continues from my hunger games prompt - “non-lethal rebellion”
It is too quiet. The birds should be singing by now, the insects buzzing. The sun is already pretty high in the sky, the light finding it’s way though the leaves of my small hide-out. It is just big enough for me to be here, laying flat, but not for me to sit up or move around much. I made it the first day, making sure it blends in with the fallen tree that makes out one side, almost digging under it.
I just woke up, heart beating fast. Something woke me up. I clutch my knife, still in its sheath. I want to take it out, but my hands are locked.
Suddenly the branches are pressed together over my legs. Someone is stepping over me, on me. Did they notice? How could they not? They step down from me, standing still, listening. She has a long dagger in the back of her belt. Then she turns slowly towards me, looking at my hideout. She is tall, in rags and with no emotion on her face. Her eyes locks onto mine. She has me by my jacket, pulling me out. I scream, as she throws me on the ground, and straddles me. Her face opens in a grim smile, revealing her sharpened teeth. A white, cold sensation fills my body, takes over. With a scream that doesn’t seem to be mine, I suddenly have her dagger in my hand, plunging it into her back, her scream melting with mine, then turns to gurgles, as she falls limp, and I let her body fall to the forest floor
I free myself from under her, a ringing in my ears. I hardly notice the canon going off, marking her death. I have never killed before. I hoped I never had to.
The cold, white sensation has not left my body. It is clear what I have to do, that my hideout is no longer safe. I grab her knife from her back, cleaning it on one of her rags, and the quickly gathers my things from the now ruined hideout.
I run until the ringing stops, and I come back into my body. I no longer know where I am - or where any of the other players are. We are 4 left now.
I now realize why it is quiet: the insects and birds have all dropped dead, probably by the same thing that woke me up.
There will be no more hiding and living off the critters I can catch.
Run, kill and be killed are the only options.
“I can’t do it. What if it’s too shallow. What if… it’s definitely cold. No.” my sister says. We agreed that today would be the day, when not many people were here, when it was overshadowed but the water still warm.
“Come on. I’ve done it so many times. My friends too. You know this”
I try to hide my irritation: it won’t help her. But she knows it’s there, she knows me too well.
“OK” she says, but her feet doesn’t move.
I grab her hand, but she immediately pulls it back “It’s just. So far down. And I can’t see the bottom”
“Would it help if you close your eyes?”
“Maybe…” she puts her hand out towards me “but then you have to help me get the jump right”
Yes! I think. I already know how her scream will go from fear to glee as we fall through the air.
I smile, and I grab my sisters hand.
The danish coastline to the west is ever changing, wild and sandy. In the past 500 years it has moved rapidly inwards, the sea swallowing all that is not protected by expensive damns and other construction. Even before the seas rose, many houses slowly sunk into the water, that ate away at the hills, eroding Denmark - and at the same time characterizing the country. When I lived there, we were not that close to the sea, but we rode to it on bike often, feeling the wind on our faces, the saltwater marking us as the wind carried drops of it to slap our faces. Sometimes we jumped in the water, getting slung around by the waves, laughing when we got out, hot and cold at the same time, panting, alive. That, my friend, is a quite different feeling than being far under the surface. Here, it is calm, and this is where my house now is. It has become home to the re-emerging life down here, muscles, fishes and crabs living on the walls and in the ceilings. Even though it is hardly a house anymore, the roof sinking down to kiss the floor, the furniture in disrepair, it is home to many more creatures that is was when I was alive here. I almost like it better, seeing all the drama play out, the hunts, the buildings of nests and the courting of mates. There is so much life here, even as my own one is now quite forgotten.
I stroke Milos fur, letting my fingers get lost in the thick locks.
“Would you go with me?” I ask him, as his brown eyes meets mine. “Of course you would” I answer myself, and let my fingers spread out across his huge head, just the way he likes. He closes his eyes and let his head fill my lap.
“I am not even sure you would count as non-lethal” I tell him, and he answers with a sigh “All that aside, I wouldn’t risk your life. You take care of Emily and Elijah for me, yah?” He sits up just to cuddle closer, a guard dog that put fear in the bravest of men, but had never actually hurt anyone. We sit there for a moment, it is hours before the kids come home. The world is silent, and I listen to it, as I let my thoughts quiet down too.
Later, as I walk Milo, I pick some herbs and berries, the way my dad taught me many years ago - only now, the herbs are hiding in broken asphalt, ditches and nooks in the city. And it hits me. It shouldn’t just be non-lethal. I should be living. Like my dad did, knowing where and how to hide, which plants to pick and which to leave.
At home I let Milo go play with the kids, who just got home from work, and in a drawer in the kitchen - our only room, if we were honest - I find the old leather-bound book, dusty and almost forgotten. Mostly because we didn’t really need it: we knew what we needed for a life in the house. But out there, wherever that was - I would need his drawings and descriptions that he had drawn up long before the new regime took over. Before the forests were felled to build new houses and to make fire for new industries. Only half of the notebook was used: he had told us to finish it and pass it down.
I open it on a random page. The dry smell, the crinkly pages, the dust itching my fingers, finding its way to my nose - and through all that, all those years in the drawer, he was still there, on the pages, his clumsy, hasty handwriting yet precise strokes of the drawings greeted me like an old forgotten friend.
“Elijah and Emily! Can you come here for a second?” They reluctantly stop playing with Milo. They have not yet understood why I have to leave, and for now I am ok with that. I kneel on the floor with them “So, you know I have to go on a trip, yah?” “Yah…” they mumble, looking down. “Well, when I come back, I want to teach you something. Something I was taught growing up” “From your mom?” asked Emily, the oldest of the two “No - back when I was little, we had something called school. So instead of work, I went to school. They taught me to read and write there” “What is that, mom?” asked Elijah, and Emily looked at him with the contempt only older siblings can have for their younger “you dumb-dumb, it is when grown-ups draw boring pictures that don’t even look like anything on paper and other grown ups looks at it” “Emily.” I said, “be nice to your brother. I will be away for a long time, so you have to take care of each other. But yes, Emily. Writing is when you draw words on paper. But do you know sometimes when we are on the swings in the evening, and we tell each other stories? When you write, you can keep the stories longer or give them to others. I want you to be able to do that. And to tell each other what you know, even when you are not together.”
“Ok mom. Can we go play now?” “Yes. Of course.”
The yellow light of the sunset fill our home as they play with Milo, still not knowing how their lives could have been.
Later I understood that the book didn’t just give me the knowledge I needed. It reminded me of who I was, what I had come from - and why I needed to get back to my family. And that I had to teach all the kids I could to read and write. In times like these, reading is an act of rebellion.
“I have just lost everything. Everyone I knew no longer recognize me, the body that I had, the body that could make children, walk and run 40 km a day it’s all… gone.” The blank faces starred at me “Well, for example’s sake” I added, and a few people nodded. “I want you to join me on this journey: what happens if I changed body with someone else? What am I then: what meaning in my life did I loose?”
“What I lost is not something universal. I can still follow a categorical imperative, I can still reason, be objective. And yet, I am hollow. I find no meaning in these doctrines. What I lost is my connections, my relations. I lost my family. I lost all that I cared about. What did I gain? Say, I went from a woman’s body to a man’s. A whole new world opened up to me. People greet me differently. They see me when I walk down the streets - they make way for me.”
I thought for a moment, then concluded: “but I would give it up any day to get back what I had build before. What I had made for myself, not what a system determined I could have.”
It is time to end the speech, I did what they asked me. I said:
“The meaning I can make in this life is… particular to this body. To the possibilities it gives me, that another body wouldn’t. White, black, man, woman… bodies in between… they all offer different ways of being in society. And therefore, different meanings of life, different connections. Different people to know, different ideas being presented. What I am saying is… there is no universal meaning of life. You build your own meaning from the connections and relations you make.” I thought for a moment, then asked
“and what does that mean for our thought experiment? Of me waking up in a different body? It means… it means, I would have to build myself up differently. But it also means, that I would have to take my history seriously - that my former body, my knowledge of what it means to be a woman in the working class - I would be dishonest, if I didn’t take that perspective with me. But… knowledge of other peoples perspectives are not limited to body swaps. Reading, listening, asking questions are always available to us. Knowing other peoples ways of finding meaning can be dangerous; it can challenge your own ways of seeing the world. It can change it. And that is why you should try to do it.”
They did not expect what I gave them in that speech, because I was not him. My speech pattern, the way of thinking was all wrong. But I did it, because they saw the body, I was in. His body. Now it’s time to find my own body and get my life back. Luckily this man has connections and can probably find it pretty quick.
We meet in a cafe, the one I used to go to with my college friends. Dirt cheap, we were all on student loans.
We sit down, and the waiter greets the philosopher in my body with recognition and kindness - she greets this body with kindness, like everybody else. The philosopher ignores her, and said to me:
“What a sad little life you have. So little to think about, so little time to build anything”
“Have you not lived my life?” I asked him “have you not met my friends?”
“No. How do we go back?” He asked
“You’re the big brain- I thought you would know?” I said.
“You held my speech. I thought this was your idea? I have to do some damage control, by the way…”
“Yah, me too. I have a job you didn’t attend. Friends you have been ignoring.”
He looked at me with hostility, then said “fair enough. Well, where do we start? Any ideas?”
The black cat sat in the sun, eyes closed, tail still. Then a desperate meowl escaped him, as he began rising, shoulders lifting straight up, back elongating, legs growing, fur falling off in big tuffs - until he was a man.
“My beautiful fur!” He shrieked as he looked around, and saw a tall man, stick in hand and a wide grin on his face.
“Martin?” The former cat said “did you do this?”
“Yes!” Said Martin, happy with his new creation, although the former cat was naked - he would have to fix that, he thought and swung his stick.
“Argh!” Yelled the former cat, as he was suddenly enveloped in a black cape, the big hood putting shade over his eyes.
“Martin!” He yelled, stepping closer to the wizard “What the fuck did you do to me, you two-legged, hairless idiot?!”
“I… I made you human, Casper… we can talk now. We can be friends now.”
“We were friends.” Growled Casper, feeling the useless small hairs on his back rising, as he lowered his head and voice. “We were friends, and now we’re not. How could you make me into this hideous thing?”
“But… but you can talk now. And enter the human world on our terms…”
“And why would I want that? You are a useless species. Know not how to hunt, or to be still. Have to wear the skins of others beings. Make constant mouth-sounds instead of just using your body to talk, like better animals. Why would I want to be like you?”
Then, without another word, he spun around on his heel and stormed off.
Martin, stumped, as he thought the transformation would have been an aid for his friend, felt the tears filling his eyes. “Nonono” he muttered, spun around, and spun around again. “What did I do. Poor Casper. I have to make this right” he whispered to himself, and then ran after the man.
He found the cape a little down the road, tossed aside. Then, he heard something in the bushes, and found Casper curled up, shaking.
“Oh Casper” he said “I am so sorry. Let me make this right”
Casper looked at him, hopeful “Will you give me my beautiful fur back? And my silent paws?”
“Yes, yes of course. I am so sorry about this. I should have known that you are happy being you.”
“Thank you…” said Casper, and added “But can you also… can you maybe make me bigger? I want to be the biggest cat in town”
“Of course. Anything else?”
“No”
“Alright. Lets fix this” Martin said and swung his wand.
The man shrunk, and was soon the size of a Maine coon cat. He stood up, and pounced, disappearing into the tall grass, only to reappear a second later with a small rabbit in his mouth. It kicked a few times before he bit down, crushing the windpipe of the small animal. He then purred, and rubbed against Martins leg before dropping the rabbit at his feet and, tail in the air, walk into the sunset.
“We have to do something” they said again and again, we are told. Back when it was already too late, they said “we have to do something”. They had already reached some tipping points in the 2020’ies, but they kept going without changing much.
I understand them, I think. Their world had grown too big. There was too much, there was too many things you had to know, too much you could do wrong. Too many little decisions, that in the end, weren’t even up to the individual- like buying organic. So much focus on the little things, while the big wheels seemed unstoppable. Until they had nothing more to put in the machine, and it all broke down. The apocalypse actually did happen, but a lot slower than the movies from the few years before it happened suggested. Mostly it was war caused by famine. Mass migration from fires and floods. Climate chaos. Now, we are fewer than ever. “Humanity”. In a way, you did actually cause your own extinction. Now, we are no longer “humanity”. We are humans. Much like the sparrows are sparrows, and the birches are birches. There is no common goal, and no right or wrong way to be human. There are wrong ways to act, you can do wrong by a tree, by a cow and by your friend. But you can’t do being human wrong, there is no “progress”. We we are beyond history. History broke, and now we are here.
In my tribe, we use the old trees for gracing cattle and nurturing fruit and nuts. A few hundred years ago it was difficult, burning or flooding often. Then came the cold snap, and now, it has calmed down. We have calmed down, too, I have been told. Apparently it was normal to work 40 hours a week for other people. We work for us, for our animals and families. Why would I work for my neighbor or another tribe? We have enough in our forest, and when we don’t, we hunt.
We call ourselves the Kesh, and have found something like a text to live by. We know the story’s written and not told by the many. But we still use it to live by, because it was passed down to our founder, and when the book could no longer be read, it was told again and again from memory.
“Fish!” yelled Mary, as she ran toward the glass in the aquarium. The fish looked at her, eyes as big as her cat at home, and then said “my name is not fish. It’s Gary”. Mary was very surprised, not because the fish’ name sounded almost like her own, but because the fish could talk. “You can talk” she said. “Yes.” said Gary the fish. “What is your name, two-legged one?” “I’m a human” said Mary, “I have two legs, but so does chickens” “I don’t know what chickens are” said Gary “But what is your name?” “Mary” the child said. “And what are chickens?” asked Gary “Birds that lay eggs. We have some in the back yard. We eat the eggs for breakfast on Sundays” “I don’t know what birds are” said Gary, a little disappointed “but fishes lay eggs too. Do you not lay eggs, Mary the little human?” “I don’t know… I will have to ask my mom. But I don’t think so.” “Then how do you make babies?” said Gary the fish a little perplexed. “I don’t know… I will have to ask my mom.” But wait, Mary thought, and asked Gary “does that mean that… that chicken eggs can become chicken babies… do we eat babies!?” Gary thought about and said “well… I don’t know what chickens are. But if the eggs are like mine, then I think so.” “Oh no!” Said Mary the child, and Gary the fish looked sad too. “Maybe you will have to ask your mom?” He said, and Mary said “yes… my mom will know.” Then Gary said “do you want to play? You can ride on my back.” “Yes!” Yelled Mary, and Gary the fish and Mary the child played all night long.
Then Mary woke up, and asked her mom “mom, do we eat chicken babies? Are eggs babies? How are babies made?”
