Synergy

It’s a high stakes gamble for me, this strategy. Part one has gone well, but the odds were more in my favour then. Part two is anyone’s game, and I’m playing to a crowd who does not favour me, mostly. They might, if they looked at the long game, but people don’t. They say it’s a team sport, which is easy to say when you’ve got your roots so deep in that it would take quite the storm to knock you out. I do understand that. The captain is playing for glory, and we don’t all need to shine for a win to be declared. But we all want to, that is built in. Everyone wants to flourish, don’t they? So here I am, laying low, hoping it might be me. If it’s not, it will all be over for me.

I was a mid-season pick. I’m hoping that might work in my favour. Serial position effect and all. I don’t know how many others there even are, but the more the better, at this stage in the game. I need to be forgotten you see.

The day I was picked was beautiful. I was lain out on the grass, the sun on my skin, the breeze gentle, like the breath of a rabbit. Below me, the earth was cool, sated by the rains of a few days before, soft, pliable, easy soil not yet stiff or dusty in the dry. Above the blue sky called to me, a summoning to reach higher and further, and a promise of always enough. In that moment, I felt divine, like all there had been and all that was to come was contained within me, and subsuming me all at once. To feel like that, to know, without question, that one IS, it’s a wonderful gift and I am glad to have had it.

When she picked me, because of that wonderful state of BEING I was experiencing, I did not feel afraid, like I had expected to. I think the thing that I said to myself was that as much as I am, so she too is, and the events unfolding also are, and therefore to be afraid would be to run away from some part of this wonderful being which I was just then in the midst of. If anything, I felt ready. I was ready.

She was very thorough looking me over, though her expertise made her swift. Her black eyes searched my body, assessing for weaknesses, injury, any sign to help her decide how best to use me, fodder for using up immediately, or something worthy of investment. Satisfied I was worth something, she reached out small, delicate fingers, turning me to touch all sides, weighing my value in her hands. I wanted to shout my worth, what I knew rested inside of me, waiting for a chance, but I stayed silent, knowing that if this part worked, part one, then I would have the best chance to become all I could be. As long as part two went my way. She was my accomplice and my adversary, and she held all the cards.

She was beautiful. A worthy competitor to throw my fate in with. Not that the choice was mine to make. It is a mystery to me how eyes can be as dark and as bright as hers were, like a spark lighting the darkest basalt, not as an echo of fire, but as a pledge for algae and moss to come and after, all the vigour of life. About her pointed ears, a silver grey fur cloaked a lithe, keen body attuned to action, and her tail curved behind her, a sinuous declaration of luxuriant magnificence. Every aspect of her being seemed to effervesce with vigour, and it seemed to me that she was likely to be an above average candidate for survival.

She carried me some distance, tucked in her cheek, without tasting a morsel. Didn’t even crack my shell. It was clear she had this spot in mind for me already, and once we were here, she was quick to dig a small trench in that perfect soil and push me down, pressing me with those long fingers until I was nice and wedged, then covering me over. And then the waiting began.

The Autumn was short and sharp. Around me, my kin let their leaves wither, muting their vibrant greens to quieter hues to blend with the soil that they shrouded, damp and warm with decay. This was a blessing to me, keeping me snug as the loosened soil shifted above me. This blanket seemed scanty though, when the winter came, and for weeks, cold rain saturated the earth, before the skies cleared to a blue once more, paler, perhaps than the skies of my fledging, and frost hoared the half rotted leaves for another week. Rain followed ice and ice followed rain until rain turned to snow, and the world lay stilled beneath a straitjacket of white, and still, I waited.

I have been here four months now. Nearly long enough to put down roots. But the earth remains as hard as bone, even though I can feel the light growing stronger. The danger for me, has not yet passed. For her neither. She passes this way, every few days, knowing, I imagine, that she has misplaced me nearby. She has grown thin, the ripeness of her haunches now sinewy and spare, her plump stomach hollow and her tail dull and flat. Those quick, fluid movements, the joyful leaps of a body rejoicing in its own capabilities, have become the jerky, minimalist motions of necessity, preserving energy where once she exalted in a glut of it. Worst of all that spark of life that made her black eyes bright has transmogrified into shards of glinting desperation. Part of me wants to be found.

What she doesn’t know is this. Today she is my adversary, my nemesis perhaps. If she finds me, she will eat me. But she is not my enemy. Tomorrow, when the air warms, and then the soil, and leaves start to return and the biosphere begins to ripen, if she has not found me then, then tomorrow I may put down roots, and rooted, I may take strength from the soil below and from the gracious sun above, and I may reach down into the goodness and up into the generous sky, and if I am fortunate, if I get lucky and part three goes well, then tomorrow I may grow tall, and sturdy, and I may spread out my arms, in time, and unfurl my fingers, and make myself a haven for her, a place of bounty and of shelter, and I may watch her babies, growing, take my seeds and scatter them far beyond the reach of my arms so that my family and her family can grow together, generation upon generation upon generation. What she does not know is that she and I are allies, if I just stay lost a little longer, that her ancestors and mine have been allies for a thousand seasons and more, and that she and I owe one another our lives. And if she finds me, then I have lost my chance, but there will be others who do not lose, who get the chance to be, just as I would like to.

If she does not find me, she may die. If she does, then I will die. If we both survive, I will nurture her sons and daughters as my own, for they will be the midwives of my sons and daughters.

All I can do is wait.