The panther wore dark hues of silk as he strolled through the sky garden city of Pearle. It was his favorite city, for everyone dressed in the highest fashion. There was a slight skip that the panther could not hold: he had heard the fashion scene was breaking into a new dimension, that dazzling bright colors and patterns were in vouge, but he did not dare believe it until he arrived at Pearle last night.
The panther slid on his boots to turn, opening a door. The shopkeeper, a bulky bull, briefly looked up. “You look like you won the lotto, Julu,” the shopkeeper noted, with a dull enthusiasm.
“Well Sampson,” Julu spread out his paws and his fangs showed on his smile “I believe I have!”
“Oh dear. It’s just as I feared. You’ve been traveling for too long. You’ll be over this,” Sampson gestured his hoof of a hand to the bright colored clothes of his shop.
Julu held a gold coin, still smiling. “Do you really think so?”
“For the love of stars, Julu–”
“Do not be alarmed, I am not a ravaging gambling addict anymore! Yet I doubt if I shall ever part with it fully…”
“Oh, you cats,” Sampson left his desk and hugged Julu. “You big kittens never change.”
“I missed you too, Sampson.” The onyx cat patted the bull’s back. “So, so, much.”
The shopkeeper sipped his tea while the merchant drank his coffee. They were sitting in the garden in the back of the Sampson’s store. “I forgot how peaceful the world seems to be, sitting here,” commented Julu, setting his coffee cup back onto it’s platter. “There is much suffering on the world below.”
“When is there not suffering? And don’t be fooled by the calm in the air; this city is as corrupt as any.”
“I have not forgotten, but it is a civilized corruption. I don’t have to fear every time I eat my eggs that the entire restaurant will massacre me right there and then.”
“Oh no, not in Pearle: they’ll wait until you’re walking in some dark alley and slaughter you.”
“Exactly my point, Watson: civilized corruption!”
“This is not something to be trifled with, Julu. I speak from experience.”
“As do I! I was eating toast at a pub in Terrin when all of a sudden a bear pulled a saber on the elderly tabby whom was eating eggs at the table in front of mine! The bear sliced that old tabby up, then proclaimed there was going to be fresh steaks for lunch! I couldn’t finnish my toast because it was blood soaked.”
“Holy… why?”
“When the he walked up to the tabby, the bear told him that he heard the cat was opposed. The bear asked if this was true. When the old cat said ‘yes’, the bear cut him up. The last thing that cat said was, ‘I’m proud! I’m proud of my family!’”
“Opposed to what?”
“There was going to be a burning later that afternoon. Two dogs were caught.”
“Dogs,” Sampson sighed. “They can be so stupid sometimes.”
“I’m not even going to judge. It’s been difficult not to get caught.”
“Isn’t Terrin using that new style of government?”
“You mean the Familia Government? Yes.” Julu leaned in. “If this spreads, this could ruin any chance we have of true freedom!”
“What ‘chance’, Julu? We are never going to have the same privileges as everyone else!”
Julu banged his fist on the table, “Yes we will, Sampson! One day we will!”
Sampson put his hoof on his friend’s shoulder. “Calm down, Julu,” he thought for another subject. “Did you meet anyone on your travels?”
His fangs showed in his grin. “I met a magician.”
He was magician clad in pied piper’s rags. He was once a peasant, a king, a slave, a knight, and a merchant. It was after too many deals and too many heavy coins that he decided to become a pied piper. He had always been a magician.
He was sitting under a group of trees in a sun-filled forest. Unlike the last forest he traveled through, which was quite dark and shady, the trees here were quite friendly. They had talked of a great many things, most of the topics outside the realm of human suffering and the latest conquering. They talked instead of the latest storms, the animals they knew, and funny little incidents they recently had had. The trees were delighted to have new company. A tree named Dog Wood commented on this. “We don’t see you human fellows too often, and every time we do, you’re always so polite and mannerly. Now I’ve heard stories from passing creatures about how ugly and hideous you all can be, but we’ve never encountered that.”
“Those creatures are right,” confirmed the magician. “Although most of us humans have not realized it, we do act quite rude to those around us, and often for selfish intensions. Actually, I am amazed to hear that you have not encountered such a human before, not even a lumberjack.”
Apple Root asked, “Care for an apple?”
“Why I’d love one. Lead me into temptation!” The magician laughed and graciously accepted the apple. It was bruised and the juice was not entirely pleasant, but magician ate it with much enthusiasm. “I haven’t eaten anything for three days.”
“I hope yer not pullin’ our roots,” said another tree, Brittle Leaf. “Why’re you stravin’ yerself anyway? Ya look like a fine young piper, you should be having a merry time, full of wine and virgins, and good steak.”
“Well now, you’ve just about described my life. That was once my daily routine.”
“Must’ve been grand,” said Dog Wood.
“’Twas. ’Twas a grand time indeed. But there was a void within my stomach. Not even my music, my once undying passion, could not stop wilting at the touch of the void.” He finished the apple and covered the core under the soil. He placed the seeds into a small pouch. “Thus I scattered my riches and became a poor piper, traveling the world in search of something thrilling and delicious, something calm and lovely, something cleansing yet filling.”
“Ya look fine.”
“Thank you, Brittle Leaf.”
Dog Wood agreed. “Now that thing that you’re searching for,” Dog Wood began. “ That’s usually the kind of people we get. The Cleansers. Not those priests from the churches– oh no, they’d try to exorcize us talking trees, and who wants to go through that all day? But the ones that either come from the birthplace of the Sun,” and the magician sat up at this, “ or the ones that have studied silently in caves, those are the humans that usually pass through here. Maybe they have an idea as to this abstract thing that you search for.”
The magician scratched his growing beard. “Tell me, would you know where the Cleansers travel to?”
“Not for certain, but I do think they travel to the sky gardens.”
The magician was aghast. “No!”
The trees were taken aback. “‘No’?”
“‘Sky gardens’? You do mean the Jardines Del Cielo, yes?”
“What a silly name!” Abhorred Brittle Leaf. “And, yeah, for what other sky gardens are there?”
“They were destroyed years ago! In the great wars between the dragons!”
“By the stars, is that what you humans think?” Brittle Leaf guffawed. “The dragons would never destroy the sky gardens! Why would they? It’s their only refuge from the idiocies of the world.”
“But I haven’t seen a sky garden since I was a little boy,” protested the magician.
“Hey,” Apple Root addressed the two other trees, “remember how we were talking about the strange wind currents the other day?”
“But of course,” Brittle Leaf answered, “as we talk about that subject everyday.”
“The sky gardens always pass over our forest and into the cloudy mountains in large clusters. That kind of wind never happened before the wars between the dragons.”
“How baffling!” The magician looked up to Apple Root. “The dragons must have something to do with it, then!”
“I’m not sure, magician,” replied Apple Root, looking down. “Dragons might be able to fly, but that does not mean they can control the winds, or sky. Only the moon can do that.”
“Besides,” added Dog Wood, “Even if dragons could do that, they wouldn’t be able to do it if there were humans, or I guess any other creature around. You know how dragons are with their magic.”
“Or lack there-of,” jeered Brittle Leaf. “But hey, yer a magician, right? Ya think dragons really can perform magic?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never talked to a dragon before. But I do understand their want of privacy if they do perform magic. It really is not something one can do with eyes around.”
“So you are a real magician, then?”
The magician nodded. “It was written by the stars.”
Brittle Leaf whistled. “Mr. Hot-shot.”
“Oh no, heavens no.” The magician, who with some embarrassment, wanted to change the direction of the subject, began collecting sticks and branches that were laying around. “Excuse me, but would it be alright if I made a small fire?”
“Certainly!” The trees agreed.
From there, as conversations inevitably do, they began to gossip about the surrounding forests, trees, and even winds. By that time, the afternoon sun had set long ago into the misty twilight, and a lovely fire was crackling happily as the magician fed it the tree’s dead leaves. Had there been another person near by, the voices of the three trees and the magician would have sounded nothing more than a pleasant murmur of the wind.
(written: 7/25/10)
The song that I play on the ocean floor,
through my boom box beat it will play to shore,
over and over the simple tune,
the simple tune,
“I can hear you”.
But this–
these are the things that I hold dear:
a voice like darkness which takes no form,
a cherub that bloomed from being ignored,
a thought wondering why it had ever been born.
A boom box I will hold above my head,
standing on the sandy flat ledge
of time
playing not Top 40 Love Songs, but one that I find
makes a mouth curl,
just for the loneliest whale in all the world.
To dive to the place where Captain Nemo dares not go,
a place deeper than the ocean floor,
a place so low
that it almost lies within my very soul
so I can play a song with no frills and twirls,
a song for the loneliest whale in all the world.
