Beats

“I hear it,” remarked Elizabeth, “it’s faint,” her hands clasped to the worn black headphones with only one ear cup, the leather of the remaining cup had nearly flaked completely away, due to the ravages of time and neglectful care. “Hold it there,” a single slender dirty hand reached out, the fingers slipped upon the bicep, with her thumb snaking around to the triceps, with a squeeze. The curly disheveled pixie cut turned to regard him, not unlike the ocean spray as it collided upon the rocks, “there is something out here,” that smile was not unlike that from the ancient tale of ‘Helen of Troy’, another squeeze as she closed her eyes. Another beat rippled through the cup, garbled and faint, the equipment was old, the cord was more wires than plastic, as it cascaded down the distance from headset to an unremarkable mini black amplifier, the kind street performers used daily during the ‘Time of Convenience’, with another beat her eyes shot open.

“...Beep…”

“It’s faint, ‘Lizzie’,” Douglas spoke softly, “it could be fifteen feet,” a sigh escaped his lips, “it could be five-hundred feet.” Douglas had scavenged parts in the wilds, worked hard labor for rare materials, and even braved Ole Keegan’s scrap pile, all to build this for her. In the time before, it was known as a radar detector, she’d seen it once when they were both in school. One of the remaining books left in this small village, far from the territory wars, nestled in the rolling hills and forests of what was once known as the Appalachian Mountain Range. So, for several years, with countless trials, with error, with every waking moment of free time, Douglas toiled away on a machine that might not ever work. For her.

The idea of a device that could pierce the earth, to find treasures from an age not a single child had laid their eyes upon. Another beat washed over their ears, still holding to his bicep she looked at him as he spoke the logistics, those doe eyes simply eyed him, in search of a better argument that would not come. A much smaller set of headphones set upon this much larger figure, though he stood almost two feet taller than her, her grip was much more like a vice. As she pulled a distance marker from her back, a yellow piece of cloth, on a metal wire, stuck several inches into the ground. She’d devised the idea of color-coded markers for the areas they came across, yellow was for the first sound, it marked the edge of the echo, blue was for the increased beats, numbered with coal so that it could be cleaned off, tallied on a piece of paper.

“…Beep…Beep…”

“Walk,” she said with a matter-of-fact tone, “we’ve found only discarded garbage,” she said with a huff, as Douglas hoisted up the battery backpack, made from a collection of small lawnmower batteries, he’d stored and charged with a small wind turbine. “This one…,” she got that look in her eyes, the one that usually spoke volumes of trouble for Douglas, the type of look that had him in a fight at the tavern or pulling her off of some fool who’d grabbed her ass when she served him his drinks or food, “This one…is different ‘Doodle’, I can feel it.”

So, as they walked. Within his left hand was gripping the amplifier, bolted to the underside of a small board, that contained several knobs. Each knob designed to shorten or increase the microbursts of energy, this allowed the echoing sound to be caught by the large spherical disk at the end of a long wooden rod, the look of this creation had long since departed the pictures in the book. The two of them whereas close as two people could get without being bonded by the village elders, yet neither had taken the bonding rite or ritual with another. At this point, it was already assumed, he belonged to her, and she belonged to him, for one was not far behind the other or ever without the other.

Hours passed, with each marker placed and each tally marked. Beat after beat, it pulsed excruciatingly sometimes with a fevered frequency. Then at other moments, it was so faint, that it whispered hints of its own existence to be nothing more than a figment of the world's forgotten imagination. Persistent, unrelenting, they were already so far from the safety of their village and home that they shared. Elizabeth was undeterred, even though he’d already warned her the batteries were almost drained and the sun was setting behind the shattered remnants of the moon. Fractured into several large chunks and millions of smaller ones, sometimes lunar showers happened, but less frequent than when it originally happened.

“…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…”

“Lizzie,” he said as he slowly began to set the equipment down, the feverish beating once again echoing through the headset, as he gently pulled them free from his head and ears, guiding them onto the amplifier near the backpack of batteries. “We’ve been at this all day,” he was tired, they’d been going out on these little expeditions, further and further from the village, “we need,” he thought about the food stores, “you need to eat something.” Even with her small hand holding to the one ear cup against her head, Douglas moved to settle in against the incredibly old, very moss-covered tree. “We’ve enough battery power for maybe a half an hour, then we have to head home regardless.”

“…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…”

Looking over at him, that bratty and defiant personality as prevalent as ever. “It’s talking to us,” she said, as with each rhythmic beat of her own heart, she felt the beating from the single cup, that held tightly against her ear. “Imagine, it’s been alone, out here, all this time,” her eyes stared off into the setting sun, “separated, lost, discarded,” her own painful memories flooded over her, as she slowly back toward him and the large trunk of the tree they found themselves under. It wasn’t long until she slid to her bottom, leaning into his much larger, much softer form, “it is beating softly again,” she said, as she pulled the cup off and lay it down atop the amplifier.

“…Beep…Beep…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…”

Douglas watched her, it’s always during the same time every year that she begins to feel the pains of a dormant depressive state that messes with the thoughts in her head. Manic, aggressive, she pushed back against everything that anyone did, including him, but even though time heals most wounds, she only allowed herself a bit of time to be angry and sad. This was all for her, it all had always been for her, as his hand slipped into his pocket, where his fingers danced around a single metal ban. It was a practice that had been outdated many years before their own births, but Elisabeth longed for those things of the past, traditions long buried in the rubble of the old world.

Is there anything more deafening than silence? Even with the faint beating that occasionally came through, the forest itself was at an odd peace, settled into the setting of the sun. Even as the last remaining beams of the sun disappeared, the light reflected off the broken pieces that orbited the planet, it was in those moments, the moons debris and its lunar dust created a visible ring that surrounded the atmosphere, lighting up the night sky like billions of diamonds draped across the atmosphere. Pieces refracted across the upper atmosphere, hues and shades passed over our planet as if a gigantic prism hovered in place. Washing over the Earth with its ever-changing kaleidoscopes of color, a billion different prisms, causing billions upon billions of small distinct, rainbows, with an unlimited palette to paint from.

“…Beep…”

“Lizzie,” Douglas spoke in a faint whisper, almost cut out by the beat coming from the headphones near them, “Lizzie,” this time with a little more power bass behind his voice, “I want to ask you something,” as the words left, the ending of his sentence crackled under his own pressure. She smiled as she turned to regard him, stifling a laugh at the cracking in his voice, “stop that,” he said, as he pulled the ring quickly from his pocket, “I can’t quite ask you to take the 'bonding rite' with me if you’re laughing.” Douglas was smart, but with her, he was typically flummoxed and usually burst out with exactly what he intended to say, a heightened agitation in his voice.

“…Beep…”

“It’s about time you asked,” she smiled, launching herself forward wrapping those slender arms around his neck and pulling him into a kiss, “I half thought you’d never ask,” she said forehead against forehead, having caught him completely off-guard, “I’d resigned if you couldn’t be courageous enough to ask me yourself, I wasn’t about to do it for you,” as she cupped his big bearded face in those dirty hands and delivered him a kiss much deeper than they’d ever shared before.

Tonight, they’d share themselves and the light of the lunar sky, even as the beating from the headphones steadily increased. As beams from the lunar sky cascaded across the grounds, causing a once in a year light show during the summer, something glinted in the light, nestled beneath the moss, in a knot of the tree, it’d seemingly grown up around something, years against the tree had caused it to swell around it, holding it in place. A metallic antique that had long been left, something that had seen wars and peace, joyous occasions, and catastrophic cataclysmic events. It now stood as the heart of this tree, covered by moss, sealed within the very bark.

“…Beep…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…”

“…Beep…Beep…Beep”

It sang outward with the help of the metal detector, it so longed to be free of its confines, to once again be adorned by someone, or something. It’d been a part of marriages, births, even the charm of a large furry beast, that’d lost it while playing in a park one time. And each time a new photo was added over the top of the older ones, for each person that’d come across this large circular locket, they’d added their own memory to it. Still, the locket called out to be found, even as the batteries begin to betray the beating of its song, even as it witnessed the consummation of love at the base of the tree.

“…beep…beep…”

“…Beep…”

“…beep…”

Behind a small frame, secured the abundance of photos on the right side, and on the left, was a detachable compass, which despite the odds worked still. Inscribed behind the compass once it was pulled free of the locket to be used as it was intended, were the words, let this be your guide, to always find your way back to me, a beautiful notion from a woman who had bought it for her fiancé, just before he’d departed for war.

“…beep…Beep…”

“…Bee…”

“…be-…”

And so, with the last cry, it echoed out through time, it’d been a hundred or so years since it’d been near any others. It’d longed for a moment, a precious moment to be stored within it. As the silence overtook it, as the darkness crept back in again, the locket felt the energy of the machine that had talked with it for hours, with each pulse the communicated. To an object, time wasn’t a presence, as it was to be among the living, one moment, one week, one month, one year, one decade, one all-encompassing century, each had its place, in the heart of the locket. Some things are expected and then some of them can never be expected, where it concerned humanity.

“There you are…,” Lizzie said with a smile, a much more weathered face, as it peered through the knot in the tree, “…the beating of my heart.”

-End-