The Unsettling Airs of Malus

Above the sea by eight kilometers, exactly (at a slope of sixty degrees), tiring at varied intervals, but more easily now as airs thinned, Ezra and Abel ended then (for the shared, growing sense that each foot added weight). Arriving, fatefully, at a scanty glade for rest, with its furthest limits bound by a forgotten rivulet, feeding a natural wading pool, emptied (the fragrances of which now permeated open airs with enticing, yet modest aromas). It babbled, daily, with ferocious intent, but less force than the now silent river. The rivulet and the river, from angles, resounded from the nearby ridges. But the rivulets’ echo had, momentarily, stayed beyond eyes’ view, obscured from hearing for ripe, heavy mists. As its clearer waters escaped the glades’ edge for a turgid river, their ears lost its ferocious depths while ascending (leaving behind no less of its noxious odors, pooling as sweat, than its turbid waters, muddied for too much forest during recent deluges). It had been a warm day, as the sun blazed, ceaselessly, with the glories (ingratiating as the ‘heir apparent’ to mid-day skies). Ezra, now admittedly lost (his confession by patient wheedling), had traced it for a few kilometers by its audible depths, which had broken by the natural, acoustic barriers of boughs layered for distance.

After hiking for two (2) kilometers under humidity (with two (2) dry canteens), each had begun yearning for the clearer, cleaner taste of filtered water (refusing the ‘natural’ alternative for reasonable suspicions). Up until then, each had omitted discomforts for not only ‘often diverging interests’ as argued by Ezra, but also for sharing much longer, more strenuous hikes. Moreover, each knew the ‘steadfast consort’ role. As Ezra knew (for Able’s earlier zeal), Able, who preferred ‘congenial safety’ by firelight at the Inn ‘for his more hectic public career’, might have dissembled a bit, but, with panging blisters, sighed more frequently (for ‘less sensible’ boots), especially now without water (among other complaints). Ezra heard these discomforts, intuitively. Ezra, with no fewer diverging values as retorted by Able, had decided, with foresight, he would refrain from even breathing at his own pains (for the distances, a halfhearted Able, and anticipating so many later ‘complaints’). Over a decade, such disparate perspectives had evinced, at best, banter, but, at worst, snark (even devolving on two (2) instances, into bouts of fists). After the second, Ezra had adapted by either diffusing with a question or deflecting by honing interests (both accepted each as appropriate, which neither perceived for time now).

Able had other strengths. He then tarried (wiping the aroma of pollen, a louder odor, with sweat now pooling at collarbones hinting at two defined, stubbly pecs underneath), interrupting Ezra as he then mused on the amassing ‘daffodils’ as he recalled “from asphodel”. Even Able, as an afterthought (for years of Ezra), then paused (recalling the faint wisps, frame by frame, to demanding a greater attention) for how the ‘daffodils’ had, begun, one by one, now the sloping fields too full to collect them in both fists. He then grew wary with malaise, as his stomach turned (an eerie sense, viscerally, had like a tule fog crept into him). The daffodils had conflagrated into legions, at war with their senses (as if by minute, marching, left by right, advanced, one by two, an incursion with ranks, consuming their underfoot as far as eyes saw). With each corona, by subtle motion for evening wind, silently trumpeting, as it heralded, in earnest, echo for the force, a lonely, derisive nightmare (but mostly, now delirious for heat and thirst, they had only heard their own pained, faintly echoed sentiments reflected). Trumpets had, for them, augured only dusk as the regular evening high pressured winds swept the mountainside (as the darker blues crept into their relative fields of view, an orchestrated play of shadows, embellished by the hints of burnt umber of the fog). Sensing then the angst of Able, Ezra then absented from more remote distances than usual (whereby escaping, even cathartically, their fraught state): “NO, not ‘daffodils’, more aged, an earlier frame, but rather the ‘narcissi’ as often proving a breeding ground for pests…” He then felt writhing behind his eyes in an instant. Without a pause, he continued, logically: “as of usage as much for natural alkaloids as often used, historically, from opiate (entertaining) to poison (warring), each its own remedy (the magic), to incalculable maladies in as many forms”. His musing abruptly ceased then as Able alarmed the nearby bluff.

Averting a crisis, neither Ezra nor Able, the often more sensible, had seen, as a matter of fact, each had overlooked for dusk, as had time, both entirely and, inauspiciously, a cairn comprised of so many neatly ordered stones (for which, as inferred, whomever had accounted for each by conscientious exertion). Smoothed by hand and/or time, over which the untended, inlayed concretes (added later) had eroded by the, more or less, constant oscillation, for some span, between the meaner and gentler mountain airs (as if reflecting for them the conflicted locals no less oscillating, at once inviting as warding). Under the overgrowth, the cairn had settled complacently, unwearied by travelers and/or by time. Its cast iron placard, now rusted, read in Aramaic an omen (which Ezra appreciated): “before ravens darken skies, as crossed fates reflect the eyes, sate the sole kin of a thirst, by obvious ends thus rehearsed, own within avowed by nature, intelligences then under some denature, as only under rightly spells, might the sense a share of smells, which by intelligence easily left, finer senses seeing weft, each as rightly within you, the disregards so often due”. As a lighter mist (consuming the ‘narcissi’), then resolved to tule fog, they had, together, begun sensing, with a much keener, shared discomfort the whole of their predicament.

Sharing in none of it, Able then snapped, scolding firmly: ‘if you had neither wandered from the beaten trail nor lost the map, we would be at the Inn. How can we now return before dark?’ Ezra, who had neither once failed a test nor bent for the force of an expression, retorted at Able with a faintly smug air: ‘ad astra, per apsera, with easy eyes toward easy stars, the clearer directions from a waxing moon’. He then, at once, returning his attentions to the shards of placard, the artifact in question, strewn over the clearing. They felt now overwhelmingly encompassed by the mostly darker blues of night as painted, impressionistically, on the ever-thickening fog. But Ezra had then an inarticulate inkling of bygone fates and glories (the magics of epics regaled by the warmth firelight). Its sense, writhing then, teasing false promises, which he intuited. He felt then helpless (and incurable). He composed himself, quickly, but it lingered as the tule had, incurably, as it then crept over him, raising the hairs from his calves to his no less defined chest (which he consciously presumed elicited by the now colder airs).

Able intended to lighten the mood as an unsettling depth of night crept into the clearing, his rich, deep dark amber eyes then, begging their more impish undertones, honed in on the hands of Ezra. Able then chided Ezra, lilting playfully: “as often a moralist as a pharmacologist, each inferring a proper, correct antidote and/or medicine as occasion so permits”. By his left hand (in an instant), Ezra had secured, each by two of four fingers (with phalanx firmly pushed to palms), two maluses, crab apples (with uneven flesh as dull as often misshapen forms), which had ripened to their dispirited, pallid maroons. Teeming now afoot (several rushed to greet them), so many of the same had begun rotting under the harsher colder mountain airs. Intertwining roots had weft the crab apple trees, which displayed, plentifully, so many deeper and autumnal maroon apples (by its variegated greens and/or the more regular viridescence as its flesh neared both the calyx, at its base, and the stem crowned by leaves, at its apex). Even as permitted by both his desperately growing thirst and hunger, he Ezra’s own eyes then fell, eyeing the iridescent flesh of the pear in his right hand, as the two lesser maluses, fell from his right (each with a thud, then bolting, turning repeatedly (hastening its exodus), beyond sight (with flesh inextricably dull, even unextraordinary, and misshapen) as Able began interjecting.

He wisped a feigned (mostly inattentive), even fainter smile with his own eyes (now wholly transfixed), and then forced a few wisps of breath through his own two flush lips, first agape (closing each, hastily). Now, the corona goaded him. But the haste with which he had shut his lips, and the faintly displayed pearly whites (dangling with a sure, yet precarious air), each tooth glistening, rows misaligned. He now sat, like his mouth, ajar, with an unnatural, rarer and uncertain air, he then mused: ‘such a pretty mouth, untouched’ whereby he then pushed what felt like a great deal of leaner air with the full force of his diaphragm, he hushed him (as he stood, staring, and gaze focused on his own reflection in the pear he felt as the history had tasked him with the gravity of this decision once before). He then steadied his gaze, now blinking, as he uttered: “we were not trusted, we could not betray” as he stood staring, alone, in dusk, with what felt like the whole of the unquenchable. At one bite, with a sense, no preparation, the pear wraps around the whole of him, cruelly.

With the crows cawing, their cacophonies submerge the slivers of a burnt sun under the horizon (whereby neither wicked nor cruel intent, marked by a murder in ‘nevermore’ lament, each caw the natural end). Ezra, as if the frames had cut from the reel, now found himself at the edge of the wading pool, peering at his own reflection in what he sees then as pixelated static waters, replacing its earlier emptiness. However, as he sees his own reflection, it flickers, unreliably, in and out, sometimes rolling with the glitch of the white noise, echoing throughout the empty glade. Rolling from his reflection from his head to his hand with him at the edge of the now silver pond, except, as he sat speechless, the glitches appeared as though the reflection of Able replaced his own with each one. Able also thirsty reaching for fake waters no more able to quench his thirst.

Ezra then sees Able’s reflection, raising its arms toward the dark skies, forcing his face under the silver pond, slowly. He cries out then, awakened by his own screams (and squeezed the breathe from an unsettled Able’s body). Able, with a now blue face for fright, stares, stunned: ‘are you okay?’ Only three words then, not his words, but Able’s words, unleash a flooded row of kisses, with the force of unquenchable thirst, for knowing he breathed each on his own. The credits roll, ending with the epigraph: “you etched your burning irises onto me, your kisses were the embers with which I had eyes to see, but as I saw your reflections fade in and out of me, then I decided less of you and more me, what good is the untouched reflection, by stubborn minor slights and some tried rejection, for so much sacrifice, the one thing that I can see with the whole of me and without pause, for knowing you, I found the higher loves that even now proffer cause. READ, life is rich and blessed. Thank you for the gift of it”.