Then Morning Came
And there he settled, forlorn yet favored. The Prince sat on the hillside saturated in darkness like a yoke in an egg, protected and jailed by a soft shell of thoughts surrounding his head and heart; waiting for an intrusive thought or temptation to break the fragile atmosphere. Lights inoffensively flickered and danced in the New Land…oh how the Nomadic Noble longed and chased after a moment of the same type of light in his own soul. Not really the flickering part, but more of the dancing. Flickering, to him, seemed to be far too fickle for taste—on…then off…then on again. But dancing. Dancing seemed to be the foreign, ethereal reality to long for while living in the melody of a flickering tune. Perhaps, with just the right steps, the perfect song would flow from his dancing…no, rather ignite from his dancing—a jig that found no difference between the dark and the day.
However unsteady or whimsical the dancing city seemed to be in the dark The Prince knew the morning would hold a new vision. Light does that. Sometimes it kills the wonder and mystery by sharing tangibility and truth…some might call the light merciful in that way, others painful, and few down right inhumane. All three resonated inside The Prince somewhere; a little in his chest, some in his left eye, and a lot in his right elbow.
But the morning alone would not share all the truth, for some lies manage to stay hidden from the sun…under baskets, in wallets, and by towering, mature trees. Though not running from anything in particular, though not scarred too deeply by any past proclivity, though not scared by any shadow, The Prince maintained a caution when entering new places, similar to a chef orchestrating an unfamiliar dish.
Light carries his own mysteries. These mysteries are the ones The Prince yields to. And the pausing is not really from or about a revelation. Of course light sheds understanding, but where realization is confronted in the heart of man a tenfold unexplored reservoir is opened up…it’s an endless path exposed to man in which he was not made to take. Explore, yes. Often. But take, no. What light shares is texture. The night can never truly share with the body the depth of a cold winter sky or how soft the grass really is. Light shares color, hope, and expectations that when paired with blind smell, touch, and taste combine into a living texture.
Maybe that’s why the lights were so personal this evening. Their jumping somehow shares an understanding that just as some darkness remains hidden, hope can still live in the dark. He was not running from anything…but he was running with something…and maybe, just maybe, if he ran with and accumulated more hopeful light, the dark in him would be driven out. At least that’s been the thought with every new land he comes to, and each time he leaves a city seemingly more eclipsed than it was before he arrived.
“Tomorrow’s gonna be different,” he said to the air with full lungs. Or maybe he was making a challenge to the darkness. “But tonight” he said reaching his cut up, freckled hands into his felt bag, “I’m just gonna try and find a song.” He pulled out a small harmonica tuned to the key of D—his favorite key—and began experimenting with the pitches till he found one that resonated with his bones. The Prince played between three notes, syncopating them against the tapping of his foot and the slow rock of his body. The swaying embedded him deeper into his grassy bed and created such a fit that sleep call in the form of a yawn. The music stopped, the companion was returned to his home, and the silence flooded back into the space.
The stars didn’t applaud…no standing ovation…they never do. Critical they were…like Prince. Well, sort of. He was critical, but in a constructive sense. In the way where sandpaper roughs up or smooths out a form from wood. The Prince liked for everyone to have the best, but Mediocre always seemed to captivate his seemingly passive friends. For most endure a modest, mundane living, but the nomad found such ways complacent and compromising; he would rather die penniless on his borrowed hill than have the luxuries of fakeness. It was a matter of being full versus being satisfied.
But, hypocritically, tonight he was unsatisfied in the way that nothing but time or deity could remedy. It’s always like that for a few days after he destroys a town. Not depressed, not anxious, not empty…just guilty. He laid down, guilty as he was, but the grass didn’t seem to judge him. Having so many blades support you rather than stab you seemed to bring some comfort. Glittering stars above didn’t seem to call for justice either. They seemed indifferent this evening…probably because their view was being disrupted by some gray, blue clouds; just the covering needed to feel nestled and concreted into his bed.
Prince was a dreamer. And a storyteller. Around this hour each evening the stories seared to mind by parents and childhood teachers would surface. Stories of adventure, like Robinson Crusoe, stories of intellect, like all the biographies, some of mystery, like Jekeyll and Hyde. His favorite tales were told of vagabonds who had dreams and would spend their waking hours interpreting the visions or finding someone who could. Each night’s prayers were made with the request for dreams and visions. And each evening he was met: some were weird, some were clear, some were scandalous, but most were forgotten.
Tonight’s, though, was most memorable.
Sweetness hung in the air. A deep breath in caused the head to tingle, the chest to stretch and the mouth to crack; a full breath out recollected the body, pulled the shoulders back and coaxed open the eyes. Then. Purple.
Not your normal purple though. It was the kind of purple that The Prince saw when he was anxious. He often saw in colors. When a situation was soothing he saw lavender, like in a sunset; when rich and flavorful he saw a deep purple, like the clothed butterflies he often sees or the dyed shawls the old women made in his home town. This was a dead purple, like a bruise.
The dirt road where the man stood was carved out of a sea of purple hued wheat, it’s banks running ten feet wide and splitting east to west as far as the eye could see. All the crops were identical in height, just below eye level. This infinite field lay unmoving under the two suns sharing their light with the world below. A sky of gray shared the horizon with a purple crop and each hung in bichromatic balance, neither encroaching or interpreting the other.
Prince cast his eyes forward and began to walk east, a sun behind each shoulder when in what seemed like ages…or a moment?…a rustling from the field broke the crunching footsteps. Stopping in his path, the dreamer was surrounded by men with painted faces. Each was white faced, with short hair—black, brown, and blonde—, black around their eyes and tracing their cheekbones. Necks were ombred gray from white to black. Arms and clothes where black and torn, with shirts burned at the sleeves and all across the torso. All three rode bicycles anticlockwise, equidistant apart from front to back as they were from The Prince. A cyclone of dirt began to form and Prince covered his face with his forearm, glancing over his skin at the pursuers, spinning in circles, hoping to catch a better glimpse of them.
And then, just as quickly as they surfaced they sank back into the purple sea, leaving this Moses on dry ground. The wind stopped, and as the dust settled a silhouette manifested beyond the sandy veil, which eventually fell to reveal a man of same stature and age as The Prince. He had black hair, freckles, and a posture that was generic, preventing Prince from interpreting his motives. No tension was in his face, no joy, no worry, no sorrow, no pain…but there was something in his eyes which many people never attain and words could never ascribe. Then, a mighty wind began torrenting from behind the stranger from miles away, blowing toward the two while causing the ground to bounce in anticipation; the fields rustled in discomfort and dust worked to define the parameters of the grandeur headed toward their ground.
The man stood stoic still—the gale continued climbing closer. When the two met, Man winced not and like a mighty orchestra quieted at the whim of a conductor, the wall of wind fell into the ground and a forbearing breeze manifested from Man and bathed Prince.
Immediately Prince new everything of Man and Man of Prince—fears, hopes, worries, intentions, all laid out and consumed in the same instant. But the wind continued to blow though completeness had come, and they stood for ages in understanding of one another, like two friends who had spent far too much time together.
The moment was broken by an even softer breeze, but this time it came from behind Prince and restlessly pushed the dreamer forward to walk toward Man. They began walking shoulder to shoulder down the road in silence and with fixed gazes. The prince knew that Man sought to take his own life, but knew not how, nor when, for Man didn’t know either.
A bridge appeared after a distance; it was made of pure marble—one stone—crafted in an oriental fashion and arched over a small stream. Both stopped and turned to one another. This was it. Man began walking backward toward the stream while making eye contact until he breached the wall of wheat and disappeared beyond its many hands. He had gone to kill himself, silent and stoic the whole way.
Prince turned around and began walking away from the bridge. It was as if the dream had started over and he wasn’t sure what to do. But this time he faced the suns as he walked; they kissed his cheeks and hands while the grain lined the street in inert reverence.
Suddenly, the three men on bicycles returned, but this time laughing and holding knives. Their bikes had pieces of metal that grazed the spokes of the back wheels which made a rhythmic, yet chaotic patter. Overwhelmed Prince reared up and kicked one of the cyclists. He fell to the ground like a piece of cardboard, pushing out the dust underneath his flatness, and then disintegrated into the soil. The other two rode back into the wheat laughing.
Prince looked down at his stomach and in his hands he held a rusty pocket knife lodged in his abdomen. A cut span horizontal between his obliques a couple of inches below his rib cage. “Did…did I do this?” he stammered. He then looked up and saw a new face. Well…a new old face. It was the mother of his childhood best friend. “Come,” she said. “We must be getting to the funeral.”
The Prince blinked and immediately he was standing in the threshold between the kitchen and living room of his old friend’s home. There was no furniture, no plants, but the smell was there. The smell of a second home encased in a warm orange hue. Prince looked down and lifted his shirt. The sight was quite odd as the left half of his cut and healed completely, leaving a wide, unsightly scar. But the other half was infected, oozing yellow and painful to touch. Prince then realized he was holding the knife and dropped it to the floor. He looked up and could see nothing inside, but could sense that the house was surrounded by darkness and demons.
Then morning came.