You are awash in a sea of life, but it’s killing you. The rich, green moss slowly consumes every inch of you, but you don’t even mind.
The rain is peaceful.
In the summer, you feast on thousands of berries; raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries, and berries without name that you find in the hollow of a dense wood. Your fingers are stained, and your lips are blue. It’s the mark of summer.
You wander in the cities, the towns, and the tiny villages. You wonder if no one notices the creeping fingers of moss that linger along every crack, but eventually, you don’t notice either. The people are many shades of strange, and you learn to watch their faces. No wonder you never see it coming.
In the winter, you can’t be deceived by the death of the sun. Oregon’s secrets can’t be drowned, and the forest lives long after summer is gone. Douglas Firs wait patiently, starkly green against the grey skies, and you wonder what they are waiting for. They will never tell you. You search the tangles of blackberry bushes that crowd around their feet, but you come away with no answers. Only lines of blood tracing your skin.
The rain is relentless.
You visit The City, because everyone says you should. The things that carve their name on the streets are not always human. Hidden behind cracked walls, the misty gardens are full of whispers. You go to tour an ancient house, carved of marble and stone, but get caught in a musician’s coffeehouse, which reeks of incense, and rotting wood. Even there, with the flashes of red, and blue, and gold, The City is steeped in grey and green.
Sometimes, you are intensely, viciously alive. When the sun is bright and biting, and the taste of frost lingers in the air. You could run and run and run, with the wind howling in your ears, and the ground thrumming beneath your feet. But then you reach the trees, and you remember: you are not alone.
You are soaked to the bone. Rain pours into your open mouth, and sheets off your outstretched arms. A tinge of moss laces your numb feet. You don’t even care. Something is waiting for you, amidst that clearing in the trees. It has to be there. It must be there, hidden in the bend of crooked branches.
