Before

Before

It was stretched delicately across her chest when her eyes opened. Cold and strange and somehow familiar. It held the reflection of the Sky-Fire. It’s soft yellow light relaxed her and the tightness she felt in her chest eased and she was able to exhale a long held breath.

But what was this around her neck? It was not made of stone or bone. Those she understood. And they had remnants of life in them. But these vibrations? This energy? This thing, was different.

The pieces of it, all linked together with tiny circles, pinched at her elongated neck. Instinctually, she rolled over to stand but her shoulder, rubbing over the rough and blackened rocks beneath her, burned. Her mouth opened to scream but nothing came out. Air escaped in a hiss but otherwise, not a single sound. No words came into her mind. No thoughts. No fears. No hopes. No memories. No before.

Nothing but pain, all over her surface, as if a layer of her skin had been singed away. Her jaw extended slightly outward and she inhaled a deep breath of thick rancid air. Air that smelled as if something was burning. A sweet, pungent odor that made her gag. Looking down at it, calmed her. It was beautiful. Radiant. Like the white lights above her when the sky was black. It sent to her eyes the same color as the Yellow Sky Fire above when the sky was blue and white.

Impulsively, she reached down to touch it, to roll its shapes between her fingers but immediately, she froze. Her fingers, to her surprise, were long and gray, thin, with three fingers and a thumb. No nails. And a slow, spiraling hazy mist gently rose from the surface of her skin. What was happening to her?

As she spun her tall, thin body around, her large almond eyes searched desperately for anything familiar. The structures, the things around her, lay strewn in parts and pieces, fractured portions of faint memories. As if pieces of her lay everywhere. And while she wanted to feel something, she felt nothing at all.

Except curiosity. Curious, her fingers played with it, pried at it and then, using both of her three fingered hands and thumbs she yanked at the small, joined circles that held this piece of cold yellow fire and they burst open into many. The sound that the circles made as each of them bounced off of the black ground beneath her feet was new to her. What was this thing made of? It did not come from animal or plant. Or stone or rock or water. Did fire make it? Was this a gift to her from Yellow Sky-Fire?

Then she saw it. A different circle. It lay on the black beneath her three toed feet. It shined like the others, but with no hole at its center, solid. Like her. Shaped, rounded, soft. But it wasn’t a circle at all. Yellow Sky Fire was a circle. White Sky Fire was a circle.

She understood that God’s were circles. This was no God. It wasn't anything. It wasn’t like any shape she had seen or touched or even had in her eyes while sleeping. This shape was shocking to her. It matched nothing. Meant nothing. And yet, nothing else would fill her mind. It was all she can think of. She sat back upon her haunches, body facing upwards, in prayer position. In this position her body recieved the most warmth from Sky Fire.

But this shape had two ‘half rounds’ that met at the center. And then extended down to meet at a point. Was it sharp? Would it enter her fingers and bring blue from within her? If blue flowed from her for too long she would disappear.

She rotated up from her haunches and stood up and up and up to her full nine-foot stature and held the sky fire thing up to the Yellow Sky Fire directly. It grew in warmth.

Then it happened. Her slender fingers, feeling a gap running around the entire shape, pressed and pulled and it opened wide. Two halves revealing two images of things that forced her to stop bringing air into her lungs. Two things like her but unlike her. Two things that seemed to warm her...inside. Swelling up in her eyes was an unfamiliar feeling that forced more and more water from her eyes. What were her eyes showing her? Water from her eyes fell upon the thing, landing on the smaller of the images and then an unfamiliar longing shot through her chest. She fell to her backwards facing knees.

Rushes of pictures leapt into her eyes, as if she had lived them. Not so long ago. The Two Familiars from inside of the thing were first playing together, laughing, as small ones, then one atop the other, becoming one and then, with pain and healing, becoming three? Her chest warmed an her belly quivered. She knew this...she felt this.

These were what was called people. These were wife and husband. These were no longer. These were things from before.