Howl Your Appellations

The Night in the Night

BOEN OPEOR

The last thing I remember seeing was red; the last thing I felt as I fell was a sharp, unending pain on my left leg. I remember feeling something gruesome on my face as if something sinister was going to rip it off from me. That was,I believe, true terror. Imagine all the branches and twigs, dead to the world, reincarnated and new, piercing through the very fabric of your existence. I thought it was the end, that I’d gotten my taste of hell and finally release but I guess I was wrong.The first thing I saw when I woke up was the night sky promenading behind the tall towering trees of the forest, the trees themselves seem to be a dark shade of blue with an eerie purple glow, and their leaves silver and tar-colored alternatively. It’s as though I was at a much deeper level of the forest, where only the bioluminescent thrive and mystify. The being was as dark as the infinite cosmos, but splatters of stars adorn it ever so subtly. They flicker and shine like a blink mistaken for a wink. It was far larger than the trees and it had features that the night shouldn’t have. The night sky parading had a silhouette of a canine, two pointed ears, quadrupedal, and a bottle-brushed-shaped tail: a wolf. ”It” had eyes that resemble two miniature moons: big, bright and golden. Unblinkingly, it stared at me and I felt no need to run or hide. Its gaze felt oddly familiar, like a hug from someone from your childhood you thought you’d never see again, a cathartic serendipity. It knew me and I felt that that was the truth. The sky would definitely know everyone, not one person exempted from basking under its ever present expanse. It’s an absolute. No one is spared from the sunset.

We gaze at each other for a long time, neither of us moving farther or closer, there was no intention of it. We were suspended in the moment. It continued unbreakingly until the night decided to close its two moons,  and for an instant, I gazed at  two perfect crescent smiles. The night spoke using the  voice in my head, “Cataclysm brew smoke” It said. I didn’t understand it at first, it speaks in thoughts, telepathically. I imagined it was my own thoughts but the fact that I didn’t understand meant those were its words. I nodded absent-mindedly and replied, “Thank you.”

When it started to move away,forwards, I decided to follow it. Nothing about the situation felt natural. I was sure that I was dead but my legs are still moving, my thoughts still buzzing and my heart still racing. The path felt almost perfectly symmetrical on each side, the trees on the east were the same as the west. It’s as if they were waiting for our arrival like we’re crowned royalty.The night in the form of a wolf led me to a mystical tree, even more mystical than the ones I previously encountered. While those trees still resembled aspects of mundane trees only with inverted colors, the mystical tree looked more like a man-made sculpture. It only had two branches at its topmost part, the two branches forming a diamond, inside the diamond are three leaves of crystalic components held suspended by a single spider’s thread. The moons once again take me as their audience.

“Stray. Return joyous” it said in my head. It means that I’ll have to find my way out on my own. I thought, in my head. The night  closed its eyes slowly as affirmation. It jumped over me and it’s as if a surge of fluffy stars overlaid with the night that was above. It took well over fifteen seconds before it landed on the ground again. Imagine a dozen shooting stars softly landing on a placid lake. Ah, you’re Matti. I thought without any sort of prompt or proof. The wolf with the night sky as its fur smiled. It’s Matti! I thought again. Matti disappears into the arcane forest, shining and brightly existing ever since the world began.

I was finally left alone. Fear started to fill me up again, the same fear I felt before I got here, there. Matti’s not coming back. I’ll have to find the way out on my own. This has already happened before, a long time ago.

I approached the mystical tree. I didn’t know what to do or if I should even do anything. The forest rumbles as if a train is present in its belly, circling around in a loop. You can hear sirens if you listen close enough. As the ground shook unshakenly, meaning only the ground was affected, not me or the tree, I began to hear calls, almost siren-like, emitting from the three hung leaves. The tree was actually a trick of perspective, although seemingly large from afar, it’s actually just my height. It reminded me of a shrine back in my old home town. We used to have a dozen little towers for the elements. Our first house had a whole city of shrine towers, it was originally my grandfather’s house so that was to be expected.

The leaves continued to chime. Upon closer inspection, they weren’t leaves at all but insect wings, possibly that of a dragonfly or a cicada’s wing. They were crystallized, as if poured in a vat of a solution of one solid and insoluble impurity. They chimed louder and started to glare. It seemed that something very impatient was trying to get me to touch them, I obliged and woke up falling from the sky.

It dawned on me that I may have been dreaming the whole time but I poked and I squeezed but I never woke up, not where I wanted to anyway. So I was falling from the sky. The three insect wings were now my wings, but as much as they were pretty, they were useless with half of the wings all crystallized. I kept falling down but some part of me knew I wasn’t going to fall in the next few days.

As I fell, I encountered many miniature planets, none of them I could properly land on and none of them seemed like somewhere I should be. They were all covered in crystals, their grounds were stone or gems. I kept falling, falling down from the longest time. I waited for something different to happen, the planets, the sky, the clouds, anything. But they stayed the same for forever. I almost gave up trying and just let the scene consume me, and that’s when I realized I was falling infinitely, in a long winding loop. The space was trying to crystalize me as well, that’s when I decided to focus on moving my wings and little by little, they started to remove the crystals holding on to them. I managed to break free from the fall after what felt like years, I flapped my wings against gravity and when I finally overcame it, it wasn’t just me that was falling but also the sky. We were in constant motion. The sky ended and the looming darkness started.

The moment I opened my eyes again, I was at the old observatory, marble walls and fancy columns, nothing like a regular observatory. It majorly resembles art nouveau architecture,  unconventional and free-flowing. There are statues of deities made from colorful stained glass. The place is a feast, a secret work of art, visible only to the people who manage to stumble upon it. There are a couple of people in the vast room but no one seemed to be interested in the giant microscope peeping perversely at the sky. They all seemed to enjoy talking to each other.

I stood in place, spying everyone, finally a person approached me with a big smile. He was talking to a beautiful lady with numerous moles on her neck and shoulders. Her hand holding a champagne glass also had beautiful moles on them. Her hair was light brown and straight; it flowed down beyond her shoulders like a waterfall. She wore a silver hourglass dress which made her look severely eye catching. She seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t remember who she was even if I rattled my whole brain that night. The man, on the other hand, did not have anything familiar about him. He wore a regular white suit and regular shoes. But, he did have a notably beautiful heart-shaped head.

“So you finally made it! It’s been years, hasn’t it? You’re all grown up now!” He said enthusiastically. I must have interacted with him a long time ago. I don’t remember anything from the times I disappeared, only bits and pieces. “Sorry...um...” 

“Oh it’s fine! You know, the ones your age don’t normally hangout with us but I guess you’re early!” He interjects. He was not at all aware that his words were just riddles to me. “You’re here to look through the telescope aren’t you? Don’t worry, once you do it’ll be easier to come back...or not. It depends.”

“Can I ask what this place is?” I inquired, expecting I’d get an ambiguous answer. 

“Hah, well I don’t think I’m the right person for your question but a lot of us agreed that this, everything, is just free space, normally it’d be empty but sometimes we’re here. Hm, it’s like a checkpoint of some sort. I’m not really interested in looking for a meaning. Hope my answer helped you a bit.” He smiles. He did give a somewhat ambiguous answer.

“So what happens when I peek through the telescope?” 

“Well that’s the fun part. It’s different for everyone. In your case, I think you were finally given permission to see ‘it’.” The riddles the man spewed increased as he answered my questions.

“Would you like to look through the telescope?” He asked. I glanced over at the woman, she was looking at the sky through the glass ceiling. “Okay.” I replied.

The man led me to the telescope and told me to “Just look through. You’ll find out what it’s for eventually.” I placed my right eye on the eyepiece and “just looked through”. I saw nothing at first but eventually I saw a searing light. It was so bright it completely dominated my sight and it spread throughout my body like air, for a moment, I was a container of this extraordinary light,  a Lacerta star. The moment I opened my eyes again, I was sure I was awake.