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Electric Blue
word count 5082

My name is Sabra.  I am named after the foaming waves of the ocean.  My people are seaside dwellers, but I love to escape to the rainforest hinterland to bathe in the deep pools of fresh water and hide from the harsh sun within the dappled shade.

As my head had broken the surface of the pool, flurries of water streamed down my face capturing individual hairs into strings so that rivulets could form flowing down my back, shoulders and fullsome chest.  I watched intently as they gently wound their way down and around my curvaceous body to trickle between my legs.  These tiny streamlets were absorbed into the soil caught in crevices of the rock on which I sat and transformed the red sand into mud which flowed more slowly now over the rocky edge to stain the clear water below with ochre red.

As I stood up I caught a flash of electric kingfisher blue from the tiny bird’s breast as it zapped through the clearing and across the pool.  Something stirred the golden balls of wattle as it passed because they spurted forth a flurry of golden pollen onto the dark water below and were lit up like dust by the spangled sunlight filtering through its leaves.

As I took a deep breath I could smell my love and suddenly my legs crumpled beneath me.  I felt my body flow across the rock like the rivulets of water had done moments before.  A sweet, warm animal scent overwhelmed me.  My body relaxed into the curve of the rock as each cell lost its strength and drained into a fluid mass like warmed chocolate flowing gently across the rock until it solidified.  It maintained the semblance of a body, but was beyond the call of my will to form itself into human shape again.

Yet I felt as though I was still standing.  All that seemed to be left was my essence, my spirit, my indefinable something which is me.  I can’t say that I stood, as I had no sensation of the rock below me but I did feel something akin to a fine web supporting me just inches above the rock.  It was more likely that I spun.  Fast like a dust eddy, or faster like a cyclone or tempest’s vortex, but my awareness remained fixed as if I still had eyes to see and senses to feel.

The pool stretched out before me as before, so deep that you could not touch the bottom.  Looking back to the other side, I could see the turn of the river where floods had shaped the low picnic bank I had just left and the little island beyond.  On the other side of the island the river bend grew ever more deep toward me until the pool formed wider and deeper here for diving into and playing water games above the reeds. 

It was across this broad section that I had swum.  Just as I reached the rocky bank, I had broken out of the water to clamber over my favourite sun-dappled rock to rest. My rock lay at the bottom of a steep soil bank covered in rainforest bushes stretching upward behind me.

As I peered into the ominous dark of now-still waters, something in its depths shuddered into awareness.  A large form was rippling to stillness beneath the surface and there with a shock of recognition, appeared a huge animal-like creature lying submerged at the bottom of the pool.  But more scarey than that, it was looking at me.

I know because I watched in awe as it blinked.  I couldn’t move.  My body was no longer of use to me crumpled upon the rock, but I could feel the terror course through my awareness as I realised I had swum across its body and was now trapped on the rocky ledge beneath a huge soil bank as tall as the trees.  There seemed no escape.

I think my mind snapped then.  The mud which had splashed from the rock and stained the river pond red appeared to have seeped down to this creature’s depths.  Its’ colour turned from murky black to dull ochre red and it seemed to flash fire in little spurts from its mouth – underwater.  Its’ body was wrapped like a cats’ curled for sleep.  I tried in vain to gather my thoughts into a plan of action.

We watched each other silently through the waters for an endless time.  Neither of us moved except a small twitch of its ochre red tail and the incessant slow blinking of its bloodshot eyes.  I have no idea what it could see of me.  I had no awareness that my body was even perceivable.

Then I got angry.  The vortex, which was now me, spun out into little threads which formed into fiery balls of dusky red spinning at the limit of my personal space.  Round and round these little fiery balls flashed in the spinning vortex, gathering in number and speed.  I used my will to trap them one by one with my focussed attention.  As each one stopped in front of me I noticed that they each represented an event from my past which had made me angry.  It was like looking at a reflective ball with images distorted on its surface.  Once it was trapped, the scene replayed like a movie onto its’ surface, so I could recognise the scene and the players from my point of view.

One of these balls reminded me of my family on the day I produced my first real catch for them to see.  It was a sea perch, but they laughed.  They pointed out that the catch was too small, the fish too boney and they laughed and told stories about going hungry to my siblings to deepen the hurt.  They all enjoyed a laugh at my expense that day. 

I was angry then and now, today, the anger had formed into one of these little fiery balls spinning in my personal space.  This one had stopped motionless before me as the memory formed in my mind’s eye, but when I succumbed to the rage, it broke free and spun in the vortex with the others.

I captured another of my partner slung across his brother’s shoulder, limp in death.  He had showed courage but foolishness had claimed his life.  Its’ victory left me partner-less to tend to his child alone.  I saw that fiery anger spin past as my awareness slipped from it to another.

My awareness caught for a moment my anger for the clansman from across the sea who was invited into my home to assist me but all I received was a scam I was powerless to negate.  That spun by as another and another formed into sharp focus, was remembered, then lost in the flurry of the vortex.  Soon I was completely surrounded by a spinning tornado of fiery balls of bright flaming anger and I was furious with that creature for locking me into this spot on the bank with no escape.  Faster and faster the vortex spun around me, brighter and brighter the flames, higher and higher my anger as each event from my past slipped into and out of focus on its way to who knows where.  My awareness became completely consumed with the anger I never expressed and the memories flashed past closer and closer, more oppressive until I could stand it no longer.

At that moment, my awareness zapped over to the creature at the bottom of the pool and with a cry that rent me from top to bottom, the whole vortex of angry fire zapped with it.  I threw everything I had at the creature to let me be free.  In a flash of red as bold as the embers of a fanned fire my anger slashed at the surface of the pond and like a fiery arrow pierced the shanks of the creature at the bottom of the pool. 

My awareness wanted to follow and be hurled against the serpent, but a fine web which supported me just above the rock, held me firm and I bounced gently back to my place.
With the anger now spent, the vortex no longer held its red fury.  It was still spinning and I was aware of still being on the bank supported by the fine web beneath my feet.  My physical body still lay motionless below me draped as it was across the rock.

I peered down into the pool.  I was terrified that I could produce so much desperate energy I didn’t even know I had in me.  Was this the energy that separated me from my love?  I felt lighter, better, free-er now that it was gone.

Aloud, I said to myself, peering into the pool: “Well, I don’t need those memories anyway.  It’s probably good to be free of such things.  I never knew I had that in me.  I want to be loved without them.” 

Blood seeped slowly from the creature’s wound, but the creature did not stir.  Its tail flicked and it blinked at me and we were back to where we started, eyeing each other in silence.

I don’t know how much time passed but there we still were -silence poised like a two way mirror between us.  I watched in shame as the blood gradually stained the waters around the wound as it dissipated into the watery depths.  Gradually shame gave way to sorrow as I watched the creature’s lifeblood slowly seep away.  If I had a physical body I would have started to cry.  I grew cold and started to shiver as if the sun had passed behind hills on an autumn day.

But still we watched each other.  Sorrow crept into my soul like a criminal entering a crime scene.  Nervous, watchful, guilty sorrow grew heavy like the cold blasts of autumn air which seep in through openings promising an icy winter.  The fast moving vortex had slowed to an eddy around me and became tangible like warm sticky toffee fresh from the melting pot.  But still I remained held at this spot by the fine threads of the net beneath me.

I called out to my love to help me.  Gently at first, but as the hours wore on I wished more and more that my love would come, that I would be free at last of the anger I had cast to the creature and the sorrow which threatened to consume me.  There was no respite.  Sorrow grew stronger and stronger, heavier and heavier until, deep within my heart something was solidifying.  As each piece, like a wooden puzzle solidified and slotted into its appointed place, my awareness caught them one by one and remembered sorrows heavied my heart.

I remembered the pain of losing my first partner to another and a bolt of cold lightning flashed across the memory replaying before me.  The sadness lingers on.  Another thought flashed within me.  This time I remembered the sadness that my friend, who, in my own way, I had deeply loved, had died alone and the memory came flooding back of the other souls I had known who had passed death’s threshold unaccompanied.  And my heart wept cold blue that I had not stood beside them in their hour of need to bless them on their way.

Sorrow wrapped itself around me in a cold embrace as I brought the image of my children abandoned because I lacked the resources in my heart to tie their soul to mine.  And I also remembered that later event of sorrow when I felt I had lost something profound as I chose commitment, lost freedom but found my heart buried deep within them.

Quietly, unbeckoned, one by one, events tinged blue with sorrow appeared before my awareness.  My presence had slowed and reduced.  I was very small in comparison to my body lying prone, unconscious, beneath me.  Tears welled from deep within, but found no physical release. 

Grief from loss, pain from humiliation and deep, deep sorrow blended together inside me.  My soul became tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.  My whole awareness was gripped with an intangible vice of cold hearted, steel hard clenching which squeezed more and more of the sorrow into a smaller and smaller space.  The net which lay beneath my feet now surrounded me and wrapped itself around my awareness in a tight blue constriction.  I cried out in pain, but it was strangled by the cold blue light. 

All of a sudden aggression against the binding took over and I caught sight of that damned dragon at the bottom of the pool.  All it could do was blink at me.  I was furious that sorrow could bind me so completely to the rock and I screamed out for my love to come and save me.  In an instant, the pool was shocked by an electric blue sheet of lightning emanating from me as the net released its grip and sprang out in all directions yet still beneath my feet.  Everything was lit up in a cold light reducing everything around the pool to electric blue or navy blue shadow.  Ripples of electricity flooded out in streams from me like the rivulets of water before them.  They crackled and hissed as they hit the water but continued on their way down into the pool and shot along the spine of the dragon as it lay defenceless at the bottom of the pool.  Up and down its spine, my lightning flashed, bolt after furious bolt, before they dissipated into little balls of fizz and disappeared into the murky depths.

But the creature did not stir.  It just flashed its tail a little and blinked at me.  I was shocked beyond comprehension, but still I could not move from the rock.  The net had tied itself down somehow.  As the energy from my sorrow dissolved into the ether, I grew calmer and a new awareness became manifest before me.  I became aware of my essence.  It was different now and had lost all of the vibrant energy that I was accustomed to.  I thought that now, here on the rock, that it was my time to die.  My essence was barely discernible against the shadows of the night.  My love had fled, there was nothing left to live for.

The dragon and I watched each other through the night.  I imagined stars dancing above and the crescent moon kissing my awareness silently before disappearing into the long black night.  I waited for death to arrive.  My body had lain motionless for too long and I had separated too completely from its awareness.  “So this is what death is like.” I thought and wept dry tears for the life I was to leave behind.  I could not return, I must move on.  To where, and how, I had no knowledge.

Then I had an idea.  Besides death, the only way out of here was to embrace the dragon and move on into the future.  But first I had to reestablish a connection with my body.  When I looked at it, I was disgusted to think I expected the world to honour me when I did not honour myself.  I hated that body.  It was fat and flabby, old and ugly.  The curve of the neck, the shape of the buttocks, the stubby fingers made me sick.  It was horrible to contemplate reestablishing a connection with this gross physical body, but I already had.  The net had formed around us and joined us both together.  I turned away from the pool and my stomach heaved.  I felt wretched and retched as the body which had stretched out on the rock gradually reformed around the essence of the vortex within me and I slowly became human again.  But then I noticed I felt quite different without anger and pain.  I was lightheaded, almost giddy with excitement.  This was a new feeling for me.  I turned to watch the first rays of the sun tip the trees golden as sunlight slowly made its way down the hillside.  I would need to act quickly to use the cover of darkness for my escape.

Before I had a chance to contemplate death by dragon, I plunged into the waters of the pool and concentric circles broke the surface of the water so I could no longer recognise the creature at the bottom of the pool.  I used all of my strength to swim as fast as I could across to the other side, skimming dangerously above the flanks of the dragon hidden beneath.  I wondered if it was still blinking but I had no chance to see as the water rose up in a torrent before me and my escape was blocked by streaming water soaked dragon.

I splashed my arms to tread water and searched desperately for an escape route.  My legs felt trapped in the net which, unbidden, came with me.  I could not go back to a stale mate, I had to push on.  The dragon loomed bodily above me.  I thought I would be drowned in its’ backwash.  It reached its head down toward mine and blinked again.

It circled me with its front feet and drew me close into its body.  It wrapped its long neck around mine and snorted warm fire which tingled on my skin and made me feel warm inside.  I was pushed up close to its chest where I fully expected to be smothered, but what looked like scales were soft and delicate and felt like velvet against my body.  It held me gently, not wishing to crush the life out of me, I was doing that myself through fear as I felt my breath compressed against my ribs.  I was too terrified to suck in new breath, for fear there would not be any.  I just held on or rather was held on to.

The only thing I could feel apart from the creature’s body was the web under my feet which I had felt on the rock.  It was gently supporting me like a trapeze artist’s net, soft and springy but strong at the same time, and the strands were very fine - as tiny as strands of human hair.

I could feel the creature’s heart beating deep within in a slow steady rhythm and as my awareness focussed upon it, I found my heartbeat slowing to match its regular rate.  I was held there for a really long time.  I couldn’t move.  I kept hearing this deep booming sound ringing in my ears and was startled in the moment of recognition.

“You don’t recognise me.” it said, and I exploded in terror. 

It spoke and I struggled with all my might to be set free.  I was absolutely consumed with fear.  My face stretched and contorted with it.  I wriggled, I scratched, I pinched and pushed, I kicked and punched but still I was not let free.  I screamed for my love to come. 

“Help me, Help me!”  I cried with an anguish that blasted the last of my breath out of my lungs.  At last, I was spent.  I had nothing more to fight with.  I was ready to die and I lay limp in the creature’s arms ready to face my future.  I had chosen this path toward death as I could see no other.  I had to now sever connections with everything that life held dear to me in those few moments of struggle.  I had to give up the goals for my work, my home, my companions, and the seaside which I loved.  In my mind I said goodbye to my family and the world and handed over my fate to the gods of my universe – and this dragon.

“Take me, dragon, I am yours.” I sighed. I was ready to die.

“You don’t recognise me,” it said, but I had already splashed too much water around and could not see it at all.  It blinked and waited for the wash to subside as its hold around me relaxed.  Water streamed from the creature’s head and rivulets bound its hair into strands as they found tiny rivulets on their way to join the pool again.

I gasped for breath half in and half out of the water and blinked again.  This time the rivulets streaming from the creature’s body did not rush to join the pool but followed a course across its body like the tracery of netting like mine and fuzed like fine cotton.  Soon the dragon’s body was covered with this netting and where it lay across the water, the net fizzed and turned dull silver as the strands spread out across the pool’s face. 

As this was happening the creature dissolved into it, shrinking in stature at first then its body became the strands of silver slowly making their way across the pool’s dark surface in every direction and I was left stranded in the middle of it all.  Gradually the creature was transformed into these silver strands which formed into parallel lines reaching from one end of the pool to the other – from the low grassy bank, to the island and across to the rocky ledge where I had spent that time beneath the soil bank.

I was dumbstruck with awe.  I had no idea what had happened.  Here I was in the middle of a very deep pool with no tangible means of support apart from the water (what was that net?).  I had spent a troubled night on a rocky ledge and fought a watery dragon.  And I was still alive?

Well it felt like it.  I think I am. I think, therefore I am.

Suddenly a tiny shaft of light from the sun struck a far section of the pool setting the dull silver strands into a blaze of silver blue glow.  Like a lighted fuse, the glow spread across the water’s surface along the lines of the silver netting setting the strands ablaze as it passed.  All around me the filaments along the water’s edge were lit up and gradually fizzing their way toward me.  I was afraid.  I was surrounded and had nowhere to go.  I dipped down under the water and saw for the first time the net at my feet which had supported me through the night.  It lay just beneath the surface now, stretched out in the same way the silver filaments lay across the top of the water’s surface except that I was making it bulge in the middle.  There was no sign of the dragon. 

From underwater I could see the silver filaments blazing towards me, but I also noticed that the net I was standing on was also blazing with the same electric glow which was also heading toward me.  There was no escape this way.

With a burst of energy, I charged for the river bank.  I screamed out for my love to save me, help me, reach out and pull me out of this.  As I swam toward the bank, the net under the water followed me or was I pulling it.  It was somehow attached to my feet and no matter how hard I tried, I could not kick it free.  Closer and closer the blaze of silver came toward me along the filaments and I knew I would have to swim across it to be free.  With my last burst of strength I kicked past it and clambered up the grassy bank.

Looking back in terror, I watched as the net that was attached to my feet while in the water loosened and with my last kick was flung back high across the pool’s surface.   The strands spread out like a fisherman’s net and were frozen into the random patterns which they made as they fell onto the pool’s surface.

Suddenly the whole pool lit up with electric blue as the strands from my net merged with the silver filaments of the creature’s into a lattice stretched across the pond’s dark surface.  At that same moment, the light from the sun burst through between the trees and shed dappled sunlight onto the whole of the pool’s surface.  The strands and filaments gave way at the edges of the pool and like stretched elastic bands they snapped back toward their original size at the centre of the pool.

Safe at last on the grassy bank, I sat, wet and exhausted and watched the sun’s gentle light glint off the network of silver strands and filaments lying in the centre of the pool.  I had no idea what happened to the dragon.  How could it be transformed into silver netting? Finally, the electric blue flashes died away and the fine silver threads which were left took my attention.

Slowly I traced along one line after another trying to discern what lay before me.  Before long I realised what a truly beautiful thing lay on the surface of the pool. 
Each strand of my net was as fine as a human hair and where the strands touched the thicker filaments of the creature’s, instead of overlapping, they had fused.  I followed along one strand or filament after another watching as it formed a spiral here or an ellipse shape there.  Together, interwoven, the lines of silver had formed braids or delicate filagree patterns of enormous complexity and incredible delicacy.  It reminded me of the beauty of true love.

In some places my tender strands intermingled with each other in tiny sheets of netting. These were surrounded by the firmer, richer filaments of the creature’s.  As my attention flowed over the network I was taken aback at the incredible beauty of the moment and I was reminded of other times when I had felt this way.

I remembered the moment when we first met.  Our eyes locked for just an instant, brown to blue as your confined world opened for your gaze to escape and find its way to mine.  In that moment, I was enraptured with my freedom as a blast of wind in my hair was sending sheets of rippling fabric across my body as it flew by.  I was happy for just a moment in that instant of our meeting.  Embarrassed I had been caught by your attention, but enjoyed the rapture of your gaze without intent.  That was a beautiful moment in my life.

I remembered, also, the day I found you again after you had surprised me on the beach at full moon.  Your eyes were big and sad at first, but I captured a glimpse of your soul through those eyes and my heart leapt for joy as I recognised myself reflected in my soul mate sitting across from me.  Now, on the grassy bank, tears filled my eyes as I recalled, one after the other, event after event of moments of sheer pleasure as I walked beside you, faced you in conversation and watched, shocked, as your love for me moved your heart to tears. 
I cradled myself in my own arms and slowly rocked back and forth on the bank, memory after memory flooding past in a stream of consciousness of such awesome delicacy that I was afraid to move in case I tipped it out of balance.

I was consumed by intense pain so exquisite that words cannot describe the delicate, filigree of emotion that surrounded me on all sides.  Is my love for me like the lattice of silver threads?  Is it as strong and flexible as the net which supported me?  Is it as beautiful as what lay before me now on the pool’s surface?  I wanted my love to be with me, now and forever, and I knew in my heart that it was.  I wanted the intensity that I felt now to merge with my real life and to hold it in my mind forever and to share my love with you. 

“Be with me.” I called out to the pool, expecting no answer.  Perhaps my love lived only in my imagination. “Come to me here” I cried. “Please” and I buried my head into my linked arms and wept and wept as I realised that my love would be with me always as beautiful as that filigree of netting out there on the surface of the water.

As I looked out onto the water again, I noticed that the silver lattice which had covered almost all of the pool had now shrunk considerably and I had to scan the surface before I found it at last.  All the complexity I had magnified to awareness seemed to be there still.  It was just smaller and growing smaller as I watched.

“You didn’t recognise me.”  Startled, I turned and stood to find my love standing beside me, dripping with water from the pool.  He had come toward me, wiping away the fresh waterdrops from his face as rivulets formed and chased each other down his shoulders and chest to make their way to home in the pool.

His wet arms encircled me as he reached his head down to my neck for a kiss.  “Are you alright?  You seem a little distant.”

“Did you see that?” I choked the words out from deep within.  “Over there.”  I pointed uselessly toward the rapidly shrinking lattice at the centre of the pool.

“Yes, I noticed that.  There are a few more over the other side where I was.” He said, inclining his head in the direction he had appeared from.  “Electric blue dragon flies.  Beautiful aren’t they?”

Feeling foolish, I replied though, but “Yes” was all I said as I watched him pull his thigh round for me to see as he pointed out a bleeding scratch he would have to attend to.

We sat for awhile, arms entwined, watching the sun fill the clearing with golden light.  The dragon flies flitted backward and forward across the pond’s clear surface.  The kingfisher darted across our vision too and disappeared into the shrubs along the river bank.  I even recited my poem.

“My love is like gossamer -
wings of a dragon fly. 
Spun metal drawn by wisps of wind
into spirals, braids and filigree
for wing filaments soft as a sigh.

Blue body shimmerings.
Pool reflections in its’ wings.

My love an electric blue lullaby
And I am wrapped within.”

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