Puddle: A Tale for the Curious

by Elena "Birch" Bozzi

  Elsie crouched to peer at the last crocus. She tromped on it and said that it was gunna die anyway.

  The weird tingling in Mae’s shoulders reminded her that strange and off-putting unknowns were around. This had gone too far. She shook her arms and her head to try to knock the unnatural feeling off, and decided to step in.

  She knew from watching Kail and Elsie grow up that one of the best ways to stop them from doing something unsavory was to distract their attention, rather than let them know how wrong they were. So, even though she felt her day had been full of walking into large metaphorical brick walls, she shelved her grumpiness, used the strength of mountains to muster up a calm voice, and asked who wanted to play Memory Mosaic. When Mae and Birch were young as these two, and entirely too filled with energy, Shari made up Memory Mosaic. The game set that bustling energy free, and enhanced memory skills. To play, the game facilitator assessed potential available options, and picked a series of obstacles to overcome. The reward of task completion was either a high five or a hug, chosen by the participants.

  Elsie and Kail stood poised and ready.

  “Ok…” paused Mae. “Ok. You have to run clockwise around the garden three times, jump over that stump, do a summersault on that side of the greenhouse, find a stone this big and put it on top of the stump you jumped over, then make one loud dinosaur noise and one quiet one. Who wants me to repeat any steps? Ready? Go!”

  And the siblings were off. Around and around they went, up and down, and laughingly came to get their bounty. Watching them play dissolved Mae’s own shelved grumpiness.

  What magic, she thought. Shari came out with iced tea. Her mood seemed to have shifted as well. The strange tingling still lingered in Mae’s shoulders, but, for now, all that mattered was the golden afternoon sun, and watching her non-blood siblings enjoy life.

  What magic, she thought once more.

  *~*

  “Good morning sweetlings!”

  We woke to the light in the sky and the light in Apple’s voice. They made baked apple streusel pancake bars with maple syrup drizzle, and apple slices with peanut butter and raisins. Twist my arm.

  Each of their meals seemed to have different sorts of apples.

  “How many types of apples are there?” I asked.

  “All of ‘em, and then some,” chorused from the trees. “Each with their own properties. Sweet, crunchy, sour, though always splendid. Different sorts are more suited to bake, boil, batter, or leave raw as rain.”

  “You sure know which fruits to choose for every meal.”

  “We’ve had a bit of practice.”

  “And your fruit has a secret star if you cut it right. You probably knew that.”

  “That star holds our magic and our ancestry. If you plant one of those seeds, the tree that grows will be a balance between our original tree and the pollen of our present. We graft our branches to continue the lineage if we want to keep the properties of an apple type that has evolved already. Our seeds hold our past, and our future together. Through our seeds, we change. Diversity keeps us strong.”

  “And exciting.”

  “Saplings, you know of the star in our fruit. Do you know its origin?”

  We drew in close because we loved the tales the trees told.

  ~

  Before robin’s eggs were blue or giraffes had long necks, the stars in the sky longed to speak with the soil on the ground. They spent each night gazing at each other in wonderment. See, the soil was ancient stardust, and remembered dancing through the eternal darkness as a bright light. The soil felt so far away from the rest of its tribe, while the stars conversed in their constellations, but could never share new stories with the soil.

  One evening, the longing grew too much for the soil.

  “Bat!” called the soil to a creature nestled in its own wings.

  “Mmm,” mumbled the Bat, who was sleeping under a rock.

  “Bat!” called the soil again.

  “Heh, whatchawant,” mumbled the mammal, slightly more awake.

  “I miss the stars. You are so quick and your wings are powerful. Will you fly up and bring my salutations to them?”

  The Bat crawled from its bed and agreed to the soil’s request. Soil understood a good sleep, so the Bat knew soil’s request was serious. After scrambling up and leaping off a rock several clumsy times, the Bat finally was able to hop into the sky. Away to the stars it flew.

  The soil thought about how it could show its gratitude to the Bat. It thought and thought until it thought a hole in the ground. In the hole, it placed a seed. That seed grew into an Apple tree, with wide branches and many crooks and nooks. Its fruit was solid all the way through.

  After a long time, the soil saw a bundle of fire fall from the sky.

  “Oh! Apple tree! Catch that!” exclaimed the soil.

  The Apple tree reached a branch out and caught the tiny fire, which exploded in dazzling brightness. After the light subsided, the Bat lay in the branch, nearly dead from exhaustion.

  “Woah,” said the Bat when it could. “Big up there.”

  “Thank you, Bat,” said the soil. “I grew this tree for you to sleep in, so you don’t have to leap from the ground.”

  “Mmm,” replied the Bat, which meant gratitude that was really close to sleep.

  It was then that the soil noticed the Apple fruits had changed. Each one held a tiny star, and each star held a story. When the fruits dropped, they told the soil stories from the stars.

  ~

  “And to this day, that is why Bats fly around at night and like to roost in trees,” concluded Apple.

  “And how stars got inside your fruits.”

  “Yes.”

  Puddle and I thanked the trees, helped clean up the breakfast things, and headed toward the Oasis.

  *~*

  On one sandy section of the bank around the Oasis pool, Puddle and I stacked flat rocks. We spent the remainder of the morning constructing a town of tiny shrines out of sticks, stones, and moss for any nature spirits or faeries that might be about. Puddle took something that looked like a coin out of his pack, put it on a shrine, and then decided it should go back in his pouch. Some familiar impression radiated from that coin, like an awkward déjà vu. The cat from earlier walked up before I could ask Puddle where he got the coin.

  “Maow,” stated the cat.

  “Hey, cat,” we said.

  “It’s Caht, with an h,” it corrected.

  It stared at us to make sure we understood. You could hear the h like a placebo effect.

  “How is your morning?” I asked.

  “Bountiful,” replied Caht.

  “So was ours,” I smiled. “Apple shared breakfast and a story.”

  “I ate the face off a mouse.”

  “What? Ew.”

  “To you maybe. To me, your apples are disgusting. They’re not a dietary option.”

  “But. Ew.”

  “I’m keeping order in nature. Look at my teeth. Do you think I could eat plants like you? They fall right out of my mouth.”

  “We do have a lot of flat teeth. We have a few pointy ones like yours.”

  “I can go get the rest of that mouse if you want to eat proportionally to your teeth shape,” offered Caht.

  “No, thanks. We just ate,” I declined.

  Puddle caught something Caht said, and asked, “You are keeping order by eating mice? Would that not create chaos for that mouse?”

  “Is death chaos?”

  “Not necessarily. It is a natural process of life.”

  I added, “And. New life always comes after. The spirit of that mouse is in a different realm now, exploring. Or however it works. I think it doesn’t just work in one particular way. We all do different sorts of things in life, so we probably do different sorts of things after life.”

  Caht circled back, “What is chaos, then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Confusion, fear, anger, destruction, pain, disarray, selfishness, suffering. Doi
ng too much.”

  “Ok,” agreed Caht. “What is the opposite? What is order?”

  Puddle answered, “Peace, cooperation, creation, patience, understanding, serenity, selflessness. Being very still.”

  “What is better?” asked Caht.

  “Order,” I decided quickly.

  “Has there ever been a time when pain or fear has helped you?”

  “Pain caused me to leave my home,” Puddle said. He paused and thought further, “Now I am here, and I met Birch. She is a delightful travel companion, and I am glad. I still miss my home.”

  I missed mine, too. I wondered what Elsie and Kail were getting into. My love for them and my parents made me smile and sniff.

  I added, “Fear of the extinction of Karner blue butterflies caused me to plant more lupine in my garden, because there was an Oak nearby. They have particular needs. Now I get to see the butterflies and smell the peppery flowers.”

  Caht approved, as much as a cat would, and continued, “Confusion. What does that mean? Confusion is a signal. It indicates that you have a lot of information, or conflicting information, in your brain, and it needs sorting out. It could also mean you need more information. So, what is better: confusion or patience?”

  Caht let us ponder that while he showed off his hunting prowess on a falling leaf.

  “They work as a team,” concluded Puddle.

  I thought about selfishness. I had been taught that selflessness was preferable. Always give. But. When is being selfish useful? I know I’ve given my time and energy to the point where I’ve felt like a balloon stretched beyond capacity. I passed my popping point and could do nothing but lay around destroyed and all wrinkled up. But I was worried I’d be shunned. If I could give away all my time and energy, I’d be valuable. What? I had to do the things that made me feel beautiful inside too: walk through the forest, create a mobile of acorns, enjoy a large bowl of rice, read a book all afternoon. Sometimes being selfish was just fine.

  Caht stared at my mind, and said, “If you really want to invest in yourself, you are still invited to the Hrun Dae springs.”

  When a cat invited you somewhere, it was a most profound compliment. We agreed. Then we made a game of dropping dead leaves for Caht to catch. They fluttered slowly, and Caht leaped through the air with eyes wild with triumph.

  *~*

  Wanders, Wonders

  Nimupara watched her pools without really seeing them. She paced a while, then told herself to calm. To calm down, she continued pacing. And fiddling with nothings.

  She had watched her pools for long enough to know certain patterns happened at specific intervals. The meetings were infrequent, at least relative to her personal timeline. Time did its own thing, and changed according to the situations in which it found itself. Still, a meeting that was supposed to take place was late. If this meeting did not take place, certain energies would build up and cause… problems.

  Caht prowled over a pile of boulders with satisfaction woven through his whiskers.

  “I saw it,” he hummed. “He was going to leave it on a little house he was making out of sticks. Then he picked it back up again.”

  “Good,” she said, and calmed. “He needs to keep carrying it for now. You invited them here. This meeting is on its way.”

  Caht batted a sparkle floating by. “You have been worrying,” he mused.

  “This is rather important.”

  “Is worrying doing anything useful?”

  “...”

  “Let’s go stalk dust bunnies.”

  “I’m not sure that will help.”

  “Want to stick pieces of tape on our backs and slink across the floor?”

  “Hm.”

  “Ok. You may pet me.”

  Nimupara smiled. Caht was particular about who pet him. His fur felt like the first warm sun after winter. Calm decided to hang around a while.

  She looked over at the scroll where she kept notes:

  Two coins exist, to the extent that they are round, flat, and made of metal. They are not coins, in that they possess zero trade value. Their diameter is that of the length of a person’s thumb. The circular labyrinths in their centers face different directions on either coin. The labyrinths concentrate flip sides of energy.

  Four triangles are carved all the way through. They signal four cardinal directions on a planet or star.

  These coins must exist simultaneously, or else all that has existed or will exist would shatter. The nothingness that would ensue would be noticed in the way that the instant between awake and asleep was noticed. We lack comprehension to truly experience that moment. That in-between instant is made of pure nothingness. We trip over the nothingness as we fall to and from sleep. We flicker from existence in that moment. These coins hold power over that domain. From there, they do their work. They influence our dreams and thoughts in ways that make us think we are in charge.

  They were forged when the first universe was born into reality. They know nothing of weathering or wearing away. Their metal is found nowhere else except within themselves. Their very existence bends time and space to their specific natures.

  They need each other. They attract each other, just as their mutual repulsion keeps them in balance with each other. Always in flux, these forces weave meaning into existence.

  I have named them to assist my studies.

  One is Crataegus. It causes those near it to push and pull on each other. It causes action, but can overwhelm the creatures it influences.

  The other is Quercus. It causes those near it to go inside themselves. It causes stillness, but can create stagnation in the creatures around it.

  They each exist as extremes. However, they bring perspective to each other when they meet. To meet, they infiltrate dreamers, who then carry the coins to their meeting place. Through meeting, they create a coin of balance.

  I have dubbed this third coin Picea. Picea is the heart of an alarming, yet fragile creature born of these meetings. Salix “Sprouty Legs” Balsamea has the extraordinary capability of sprouting legs of trees and roots to wander long distances. Its eyes are Crataegus and Quercus, though it can’t see with them. The coins use Sprouty Legs to explore, and they drop off when they’ve seen what they need to see. It has tentacle-like feelers on its head that it uses to sense its environment in ways I can perhaps only imagine, and perhaps not even get that close.

  Picea coins are scattered around the universes. Part of my work is to collect and reposition them as time and space changes. Beppu helps. Our goal is continual balance.

  *~*

  The Oaks invited us for a lunch of acorn-porcini soup, which tasted like someone boiled down all the richest earthy flavors of a deciduous forest, added some nutty notes, and served it in a wooden bowl. On our way there, Puddle and I picked handfuls of raspberries to share.

  As we finished our meal, the Oaks mentioned a meeting in the Stone Circle at noon the following day. We agreed to attend.

  “What do you feel like doing today?” asked Puddle, as we helped clean up.

  “I kind of want to go visit the Birches again. We had a moment the other day when I learned that they were my people. How about you?”

  “I am in the mood to wander aimlessly and think about life.”

  “A Willow is hosting a workshop on intuition this afternoon. Want to meet up then?”

  “I sure do. See you then, friend.”

  *~*

  Puddle remembered.

  He walked through the forest with a cloud over his heart and a wet autumn day, the kind where the cold leaves fell and stuck to everything, in his brain. He did not want to concern Birch about his less-than-sunny mood. He knew the power of talking through things, and he knew the power of thinking through things. This was a moment for thinking.

  All the meditations and healings they had undertaken at the Festival had left him contemplative, in a worrisome way. He had dredged up memories, confronted them, and loved them into a state of healed scar tissue. But he wor
ried.

  He had gotten accustomed to having a traveling companion, and loved sharing experiences with Birch. He worried she might decide to go her own way, and he would find himself alone again. She had every right to do what she had to do. He worried he would miss her. He worried that he might have to break away from her to do something that he had to do. He worried what that something might be, and that she might get lonely. He worried about causing her pain.

  He worried she might get sick or physically hurt, and he might not know how to fix it. He worried he might get sick or physically hurt, and she might feel guilted into fixing it. He worried she might not try.

  He worried about worrying. Were his thoughts useful? Were they preventing potential disasters? Were they from an old pain that he had not yet dredged up?

  His worries scattered his brains so he could not think. They drained his energy, and he sat down in the middle of wherever he was. He had stopped paying attention to his position in the forest. He sat, and breathed shallow breaths, and worried.

  That was not helping. He sat straighter, and took deeper breaths. The oxygen coursed through his blood, up to his brain, and his mind cleared a little.

  Puddle remembered a wise woman from his home planet. She refused to gather certain healing roots and herbs unless an issue arose. She said keeping those things around invited illness into their lives. Those medicines were for specific purposes, and they would remind anyone who saw them of illness. They would plant worries in minds, which would grow into truths. Deal with it if it happened, rather than ask it to happen.

  He wanted to put his worries away, to let them go. He worried they would come back around and get stuck in his mind, and sabotage his life.

  Puddle blinked and found he had wandered to the outskirts of the Stone Circle. So much trust and reverence had been intentionally placed in that sacred space. He stood up and walked closer. It felt as if someone had put a blanket around his shoulders, and handed him a warm cup of tea. Everything would be ok.

  Would it? His breath quickened.

  Yes. Even if something unplanned happened and caused pain, it would be ok.

  Would it? His breath became a little angry. Anger pushed painful things away.

  Yes. Remember the power of vulnerability. Remember your intuition.

  Puddle walked into the middle of the circle, and put his hand on the stone that sat in the center. It filled him with trust. He knew he was adaptable. He knew that sometimes blocks happened that pushed his path to a more interesting one, eventually. He knew many of the triggers that caused him pain were indications of places he needed to put more love. The triggers were like broken bones. If you kept banging them on stuff, they would stay broken and mangled. If you put them in a calm environment, and wrapped a cast of love around them, they would heal strong as a sun.