before i let you go

life as a vehicle, living as a journey

On the eve of the last light, there’s a special spot of shade under the scenic tree which has grown from the iconic hill. It’s been rendered in countless stories; spoken, written, drawn, painted, dreamed, remembered and forgotten, yet it persists beyond its instances and it symbolizes something grander than symbols can afford. As a testament to time and as an agent of timelessness, it’s marked both beginnings and endings while embodying what it means to bear presence.

It is the last minutes of a first life for a being who knows not of its next station. As sweet as life has been and as bitter as death could be, an esteemed patron of the cosmos bidding temporary farewell to a fresh face in the bright stadium of existence is a moment which finds its way very near to the figurative heart of the body of life at its grandest scale. For many, such tenderness encapsulates a vast swath of their answers to the question prodding at a tangible meaning of life.

“It might seem like an end to all ends, but I wish to convey the sureness of yet another beginning.” A titanic whale simultaneously cries in an unfathomably deep tone paired with a curving bright whine, a harmony which artfully dips into dissonance every few notes.

“I wish only to be, however I might be seen.” A burning boat rests atop waves, wood screaming and wax squealing in the crinkle of the roaring flame. Unnaturally patient and unnervingly coherent, a lone captain’s wish to go down with her ship keeps her at the helm despite its guarantee of a shorter life.

Capable of putting out the fire, the whale serves as witness to the spectacle of light. Capable of jumping into the water, the captain watches the sparkle of the moon reflecting against both the whale’s eye and the sea’s cresting waves.

As mast, hull, and railing alike fall apart into the sea, sometimes small enough to be spared the rage of the fire, sometimes large enough to stay ablaze atop the water, the captain recounts moment after moment to the whale, like they’re a part of the same crew seated neatly at a bar after decades of traveling together.

“In the odd jungles of Dredenn, I met an oversized insect who took the shape of sticks and leaves whose chirps made perfect sense to me, as if they entered my mind as full ideas rather than interpretable sentences.” The captain continues while new pieces of her boat fall toward her but only near, getting no reaction from her, like she had full faith that even in paired death her ship would not fail her.

The whale interjects, “The avatar of Mymnis, a being I met before the moon had ever been lit.” The whale shuffles through waves to appear on the other side of the boat, its massive form causing ripples which put out some of the smaller fires from debris surrounding the ship, careful not to affect the larger fire.

The captain paces around the helm, responding, “One of the ideas I’ve never been able to shake—the bug chirped to me the very notion, the very imagery, that I’ve already sailed every sea and flown every sky—something blasphemous! Sky sailing, could you believe it?”

In what ways imaginable a whale could chuckle, subsonic pulses and pairs of pitches high and low, the whale slowly circles the ship, blowing a sky-high flare of hot steam through its head, remarking on the tall tale recounted by the captain, “Seas and skies are not so different; by your next voyage you’ll find a similarly shaped truth.” Each word bellows across the boat, providing small respites for the captain in the form of cold airs.

A warm smile makes its way to the captain’s expression, along with a small note of acknowledgment, a “Hmph,” followed by a rising roar of flickering fire along with more floors breaking apart. “So then, if I’m to believe all that you say…”, the captain casually wanders to the edge of the boat, where there is yet still a railing, albeit on fire. She doesn’t seem to mind the flame as she rests her elbows on it and stares outward, away from the whale. “I might live again, skyward or otherwise, sailing all the same?”

The whale finally blinks, in what feels like slow motion compared to the succinct movements of the captain. A methodically slow, drawn out “Yes” echoes from the whale. This “Yes” seems to permeate the core of the captain, assuaging the notion of a first-time death, still unsure of the prospect of life before or after any one specific life.

“I can fathom, like each of my escapades, that these moments, these stories…”, she says as she wanders to the other side of her boat, the railing she just leaned against perfectly crumbling the moment after she begun moving, “they’re all part of a bigger picture, some people might call ‘Captain Crisandra’, others might call ‘The Red-Bladed Seafarer’, or what have them.” She rests again at another railing, still intact, though only for some more moments.

“Names, titles, stories, moments—” the whale hums out, middling tones with comfort embedded in their sonic waves, watching as the captain’s weight gives way to a break in the boat’s structure, splitting it in half long-wise, causing the edge which the captain currently leans on to part from the edge she previously leaned on. “They are part of the tapestry.”

Without a stumble, the captain looks back to her now-split ship, with some endearment in her eyes as the story of her boat is witnessed by a mythological beast alone, something or someone to carry her moments beyond her end, something somber and peaceful altogether. “In youth, I fancied a death at the hand of a worthy opponent, or a disaster whose breadth outsized my desires, but—”, the half of her ship she no longer inhabits wilts into the sea, falling over and beginning to sink under its weight, flames dousing in sections as a heavier half makes its way first. “I didn’t think that a joy ride on my own, met by an ordinary thunderstorm, would be my demise. At the very least, it’s special to me, meeting you. Another notch in the belt, albeit strange like many other stories I’d have, a whale whose words could be understood, and some chitchat whilst my life and its work is melted into one of my favorite seas.”

Some wordless minutes pass, enough said between the two, accompanied still by moonlight and firelight alike. The captain begins to slow, exhausted by the fumes and heat, until the slowness reaches stillness. The whale, as witness, unblinking, as a stoic ledger of life.

A leaf falls from the scenic tree, ready to meet the iconic hill. The sun beats ordinary, the wind smoothens the air, guiding the leaf to a soft landing amongst the rolling grasses.