We took a few more steps and then quickly moved towards the other side of the clearing, the trees didn’t seem as tall there but the sun was bearing down on us from the opposite direction. Its warmer light cast no shadow over us and instead warmed the ground. I took a look at the other half of the clearing and it looked different, cold and colorless. Its grasses and plants looked grey and lifeless compared to the sunny section where we stood. The sun felt warmer and stronger which changed how the ground felt, it was summer again. I felt something else change as we stood there. It finally seemed more welcoming for us. After a long journey, I finally felt like we were in the right place. This allowed her to relax and she released my hand. I had walked behind long enough and I moved ahead to stand at her side, no longer lurking in her shadow. She carefully took out the pendant again and it seemed to take on a different glow under the sun, radiating an odd color that emanated an otherworldly energy. I looked at it glisten under the light and in it had turned a light, aqua blue, with a transparency that allowed you to see right through it. She held it up to the sun and looked at it closely. In that position, it revealed a number of intricate symbols that were immediately familiar to me. I didn’t still know exactly what each of them meant but, I had a good enough sense of them at that point which allowed me to read their inscription and decipher its general message. She looked over towards me and seemed happy that I had remembered so many of them. I tried to read them slowly, though I knew my attempts were still inadequate. I made a few attempts but couldn’t quite connect them into place, leaving me a little disappointed and frustrated. She decided not to take too much longer with this and motioned me to take a break from my attempts. She slowly pulled the strings back around the pendant and she grasped it firmly with both of her hands that time. She pulled it closer to herself and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and waited, then another. She moved her hands around it and rubbed it in circular motions until it seemed like it had spun around a dozen times. She finally stopped and opened her eyes again, and turned her gaze towards me. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, but I slowly realized what was happening as I watched it swinging beneath her fingers. It was finally ready to give up its secrets.

She gave it to me with some reluctance; I could see that she wasn’t sure I was ready. The first thing I noticed is how much lighter it seemed now than when I had first found it hidden under the rocks in the water several hours earlier. She had warmed it up and its energy felt like it had been released, and when I held it, I could feel something I hadn’t before. I decided to make a few circles with its ropes and carefully made the first few loops, mimicking the way she had tied the boat to the docks earlier. I twisted the ropes carefully until they wrapped around its sides, roughly the same as she did, but the result ended up being slightly tangled. I held it firmly in my grasp, and wouldn’t let go for anything. I felt a small surge in my hands for a brief moment, and something strange happened. I looked at her and for a moment, she had the strangest expression, as if she had seen a ghost. It wasn’t something I expected, but then I saw a vision of her from the past. I didn’t know if it was her for a brief moment, but underneath the different exterior was the same person. I felt the memories flood into me and some of them I couldn’t explain. In one of them, I saw her visiting me in a different place at some distant point in the past but she looked quite different again, taking a completely different body, though I still knew who she was. As quickly as the memory came to me, it vanished from my mind when I felt her tap my back. This was getting a bit too intense, this wasn’t for me to see at that moment. I stood again and coming back so quickly was disorienting. I stood there and found myself back in the same spot. I was standing under the sun, with here beside me once more, neither one of us having moved at all. I had tried to comprehend the memory but, it had come on too strong and ended up making me feel confused and overwhelmed. I couldn’t understand what it meant. I would have to try harder, I made another attempt at it. I took a deep breath beforehand and went slower. This seemed to make things easier and the ropes were finely wrapped. I pulled it upwards again and held it facing the sun. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt a second, much stronger burst of energy in my hands. I felt a sudden rush of energy and then an unexpected calmness. It was very quiet which allowed me to concentrate on what was happening. She was still standing beside me, but I felt different. I was starting to realize that things weren’t what they had seemed. This possibility was both unnerving and liberating. I looked at her differently in that moment and felt a strange sensation - everything I had thought I knew wasn’t quite what I thought it was. Despite the many long journeys and strange encounters, I realized I didn’t know what was happening after all. She had taken the ground from under my feet and left me hanging, it wasn’t the best feeling but I knew there was some reason behind it. I just needed to discover what it was. I decided that I would have to look elsewhere to uncover the answers.

After thinking about it for a moment, I felt myself being pulled upwards, back towards the sunlight, a reflection of my mind, but it seemed different in some strange way. Initially, the skies seemed the same, covered in blue with small clouds, but this changed once I closed my eyes. I felt things change when I took a deep breath and conducted another spin move with my fingers. I opened my eyes and there was a different world above me. I looked around and the skies were suddenly filling with streams of colors and lights, running far above, surrounding the island over head, moving towards us. The colors seemed strange and seemed like they’d come from a distant place. It was overwhelming, but I took another deep breath and closed my eyes. This allowed me to focus on the sound. There was only the noise of a small breeze, rustling through the trees. As I listened, these were accompanied by words. It was her voice, she talked in a quiet whisper at first, slowly coming to me, with a few words at a time. Most of them didn’t seem to make sense, but things became clearer after a few minutes. She began by explaining that some of the symbols I’d encountered meant different things to me than they did for her. There were signs she had sent that she knew I’d understand, while others were meant as disguises to keep her actual messages hidden. 

As she spoke, her voice got stronger and easier to comprehend. I didn’t know exactly what was occurring, it overwhelmed me again, there were too many cross-currents rolling through my mind simultaneously. They contradicted and clashed with one another, marking one spot, only to erase it and shift position, which made it almost impossible to understand what she was trying to tell me. She noticed my confusion and tried another approach, telling me to concentrate on the pendant. I put it in the air once more felt its energy change. I closed my eyes again and placed it in my hand. It had warmed up significantly and it felt lighter. In a way, it almost seemed like it was breathing, like it was alive, and it started to break through and communicate with me. It seemed to be transferring thoughts to me and there was a sudden rush of memories that weren’t my own. I could feel her begin to communicate her thoughts, and she had entered my mind, becoming a force within my mind. In that moment, I realized that she had known me far longer than I ever realized. She had known me many years before, but we had been separated from one another without warning.  As the memories unfolded, I realized that she’d been waiting a long time for me to return. This was confusing at first, I hadn’t left her. She was always the one leaving me, I felt. I didn’t understand what those memories actually meant at first. It took me awhile to figure it out, but once I understood, it was as if she had taken the ground from beneath my feet, leaving me hanging in the air, suspended without anything to hang on to.

I wasn’t expecting to discover that and it was disorienting, like the world had been turned upside down, everything was different. I looked towards her with a new understanding, but wondered what else was going on underneath the surface. When we had met, there was always a strange  connection, but I couldn’t ever place it until that point. It was something I never realized, though once it came to me, time seemed to stand still, a distance evaporated almost instantaneously. I took another deep breath and plunged even deeper into those memories. I felt her sadness over what happened to me and saw the shadows she walked under during the long journeys she took. I walked alongside her through many different places and many different times. I saw her building strange machines hoping one of them would locate me to no avail. I saw how much effort she expended trying to find me. Much time had passed and a watched her walking on a long path that offered no assurance that it would bring us back together.  When she finally located me, she wasn’t sure if I was really there. At first, she thought it was a mistake and didn’t think I was actually the same person she once knew. I looked completely different to her. She went back and forth on this and had to watch me for quite some time. She watched me wander through the different places we had known, and had followed me around. She wondered if I remembered any of the things the happened to us. She spent a lot of time walking behind me in the shadows, echoing my steps through the places we’d been in the past, taking care not to be noticed. I didn’t know what it all meant at first, but the more she told me, the more it almost made sense. As I relived our earlier encounters, I began to realize why she had been following me, and why she had been so reluctant to hand me the pendant. I knew what it represented but, even after all I had found out, I was still unsure that I was the right person to hold onto it. I gave the pendant back to her. It felt heavier now, older and sadder, and its glow seemed to dim, clouding its color, the markings once again obscured, She took it carefully and put it back into its safe place, under her shirt. I looked into her eyes, which seemed unexpectedly calm.

I felt the sun on my head, but it had already begun to accelerate its descent, nearly falling below the trees into the horizon. It was quickly surrendering to the night, diminishing to a shadow of its former strength. I felt a bit strange knowing what she had experienced. Her travels were nearly parallel to mine but she had very different reasons for her journey. She had watched me from afar for a very long time before emerging to reveal herself to me only after she was sure of who I was. I looked back at her and sensed a lingering sadness over what happened to me many years earlier. After a few minutes, all of it began to sink in to me. I though back on many of our earlier encounters and their seemed different in perspective. I looked at her and she seemed strangely serene, as though a burden had been lifted from her. I felt something growing inside me, I had gained a new perspective that created a weight on my shoulders. I looked up and saw the sun submerging even further behind the trees, slowly giving way to the night. We stood together watching the trees sway under the wind. The rest of the world seemed distant and remote. We felt separate, removed and feeling far from anywhere. It had been a long day and when I looked at her, I knew we would have to depart. I took it all in one more time, scanning our surroundings and wondering if I would ever return, I had so many conflicting thoughts, most about what I had learned. She released her hand from mine and began to walk across the clearing, slowly, but deliberately. I watched the darkness trail behind her as she began to move towards the trees. She needed to find the way back towards the boat on the other side of the island. I was still overwhelmed. I decided to take a moment and remained there standing in place. After that happened, I wasn’t sure I could handle much more.

My instincts told me to follow her, but I was reluctant to begin another trek and I was tired in many ways. It had become an unexpectedly eventful adventure and I wasn’t sure I could handle much more. The shadows began to grow longer and I needed to make a decision. I would be stranded there if I stayed behind. I walked back towards the clearing back towards the shore. My head was still swimming, going in a million directions at once. I reached the edge of the forest and its thicket of trees and felt their sharp branches punching my sides, but I knew I had to keep going. There were so many signals that I had missed and they only seemed to make sense when I looked back. I was almost running to catch up to her and I finally heard her footsteps falling just ahead of mine, going back through the narrow path. After much effort, nearly tripping on my feet trying to keep up, I finally saw a familiar form ahead of me. I still trailed behind, running in her shadow. It was harder to make my way with warm summer day quickly succumbing to the night. I caught my arms on a few branches but couldn’t slow down, there was too much at stake. Walking quickly to beat the impending night, I noticed her feet pounding, almost like she was being pulled back towards the ground, her steps no longer as light as they once seemed. We walked deeper into the trees which only seemed to underline her determination. Undeterred, she seemed walk at a faster pace, quickly moving to a near run, like she was trying to out pace the dark memories that seemed to chasing behind her. She began to walk faster, almost sprinting ahead of me.  She looked different than the she did only a few hours before, in a weird way, it seemed like she was trying to run from the darkness pursuing her.

After much effort, I caught up and we were nearly running directly alongside one another. As we neared the edge of the forest and came to the break, we arrived on the narrow beach. It had taken a long time for us to get back there and we quickly moved towards the docks and our boat. She took the lead and walked quickly towards the other side of the beach. I felt the night-time coming on and I knew we had to move quickly. There wasn’t a lot of light, but I saw the outlines of the docks beckoning in the distance. I was relieved that we would be getting away from there, it had turned out to be more complicated than I expected. She seemed to anticipate our escape and we took each others hands. As we got closer, something seemed strange. I looked for the boat, but It wasn’t there. She seemed as surprised as I was, this wasn’t what we expected.  We stood there and looked around. The boat was nowhere to be found. We were alone on the shore, in the early night where darkness now prevailed. There was no one else around, the waves had grown still and silent, there was no one else around. I looked at her and she was perplexed by what happened and, uncharacteristically unnerved by this unexpected circumstance. We took a few steps and split up, I looked down the beach and she went back towards the other side. I saw her wandering around, stepping over the rocks, turning rapidly in different directions, unsure what to do next. She looked around the beach, waked over more of its rocks and shallow gaps, nervously stepping onto things. After a few minutes, she went back towards the docks, now deserted. She walked up the short ladder and looked around the empty docks, searching for some sign of it, but there was nothing there. It slipped away from us without warning and didn’t leave a trace, none of the ropes on its surface looked like they’d been touched.

She walked up and down the dock several more times with increasing intensity, examining its boards and gaps but the boat seemed to have vanished into the night, disappearing as quickly as it had shown up earlier in the day. There was nobody around, but there was no sign of someone else having been there. Until that moment, I hadn’t ever seen her lost like that, which made me afraid as well. I tried to help but there was nothing I could do. I had no idea what had happened, though it seemed like we had lingered too long in the clearing and had missed our way out of there. We continued to look but found nothing. I looked back towards the trees, clustered together they seemed have grown taller, becoming imposing and silent. If they knew what happened, they weren’t telling us. We were surrounded by the darkness with no path to go. I decided that we needed to stick together. I took her hand and we walked around the beach, going in circles, attempting to locate the lost vessel. Despite our best efforts at locating the boat or finding some sign, it had vanished into the night. This was going to be a longer stay than either of us had planned on. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something. I took it all in and tried to listen, hoping for something to emerge from within the silence. I felt lost and afraid, even with her standing beside me. I took a few steps towards the water and heard my feet hit something. It was a small sea shell, and its cracking noise caused me to remember that we were in a similar situation in one of our previous meetings. We had found ourselves stranded like this once before. I knew she was afraid because of how that ended. I decided to try and calm her fears. I held out my arms and held her hands closely in mine. I made a promise to her. I wouldn’t make the same mistake. She wasn’t going to lose me again.

- Michael Palisano