There and Here

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. She wasn’t supposed to be in his room, but she snuck in whenever possible. It was worth it just to take a quick look.

The view never changed, but that didn’t matter. It was There, and There wasn’t Here. Even though she had the view memorized she looked every time she had the chance, Sometimes the light was different and changed the direction and length of the shadows. A couple times she saw it by moonlight. Once she saw a piece of debris being blown by the wind, that was an exciting day,

She quickly exited the room, holding the latest view tightly in her mind. She tried to envision what There looked like in the Before. That little dry gully could have been a creek or a stream. No, it was a river. It was her river. What should she name it? There River? That sounds so cold. Cold River? Wait, Warm River! It would be the lovely Warm River flowing swift and clear, giving life to the area around it. She would joyfully wade into it with her bare feet and drink freely of its sweet cold water. There would be fish. Of course, there had to be fish. She remembered reading about Rainbow Trout. That sounded so lovely. The Warm River teeming with beautiful Rainbow Trout. And those ugly dead stumps would be trees, a bountiful grove of fruit trees. She had never eaten fruit. There was this one guy in the Here who remembered eating fruit, but he was really old - like thirty. He said that it came in many different shapes and colors and they all tasted different.

She stopped, realizing she didn’t really know what taste was. The only thing she’d ever consumed was Basic Supplement A. She began to wonder if there were other supplements and if there was a difference between them. What did people There eat in the Before?

The internal conversation was one she’d had countless times before. This time she came up with some new questions: did the people who were There think of it as Here? When they lived in the Before did they call it the Now? Wow, so There in the Before could have been Here in the Now. Her head was spinning.

She sat in a quiet corner, recreating the view in her mind and imagining the Before. Those barren brown hills would be covered with something called grass. All she knew about it was that it was green and soft. Flowers! She had seen pictures of flowers. They were beautiful and colorful and the book said they smelled sweet. A new thought jolted her out of her vision. What happened to the Before? If There had the river and the fish and the trees and the fruit and the grass and the flowers, why did they destroy it? She began crying, Angry crying? Sad crying? She wasn’t sure. Maybe both. What did they do to her river? Why did they destroy her trees with their marvelous fruit? Who took away her lovely fragrant flowers?

Avoiding other people, she returned to her sleeping mat. She cried herself to sleep after making herself a promise. Some day when the After becomes the new Now and There becomes Here, she will restore the Before. There will be a flowing river with fish, trees with fruit, and green hills with flowers. She would start working on a plan tomorrow, after she took one more look out of the forbidden window.