The In-between

We fear darkness and have been taught to do so since we were small children. Nothing good ever comes from anything dark, stick to the light my love, follow moonbeams, never stray from the path into the murky depths that lap at the edges of your world. At some stage in our long or short lives, we inevitably become lost in the dark. It is the way of things.

I see you gathering darkness as the world becomes too much to bear, and you have cried saltwater tears that pool around you like a small lake. A lake that grows day after day until it has almost become its own mini-microsystem. The tears eventually dry up, and the darkness gathers outside like warriors at your gates, watching, waiting. You push back, mentally identifying cracks in your fortress, chinks in your armour and stopping them up. It takes all of your energy, and finally, you collapse, and the first tendrils of darkness reach out for you and begin to weave a shroud around your weakened body. You do not stop it, and you remain enshrouded for days, weeks, even. Possibly longer, you have lost all sense of time.

From outside of your cocooned form, you sense someone picking at the seams of your darkness, loosening the threads. You imagine the darkness not as a shroud any longer, but as a warm, comforting blanket, knitted by a nanna with a round belly and a head of curly, white hair. Your nanna, long gone but never forgotten. You remember her warm hugs as you snuggled into her squishiness, the soft texture of her hair, like a spring lamb. You know she still remembers you.

Nanna is neither here nor there. She is in the worlds between the worlds, where she can still keep a weather eye on the people she adores, the ones she helped to create. You start to help her, tearing through the stitches, emerging into the light, rising to your feet and throwing open the door. Nanna is there waiting. She gathers you into her arms, and you can feel her, really feel her.

She leads you outside, then, keeping a tight grip on you, she kicks up her heels, and you both soar into the air. Up, up, up, amongst the stars, coasting on the Milky Way, whooping like teenagers. You look down on the world, at the destruction we humans have caused, the havoc we have wreaked. You want to cry, but you are all cried out. It is too late to change what has passed. It was too exhausting to keep trying.

Nanna steers you onto a star, and it begins to spin, faster and faster, until you fall. No, you're not falling, you are flying, like Wendy taking her first solo trip without Peter. Exhilarated, you turn back to find Nanna, but she is nowhere to be seen. You play amongst the stars until you cannot fly any longer, and gazing down, you see an island. You drop gracefully down, landing on the pristine, white sands of the in-between.