THE WITNESS PATH · FICTION / SONG MYTHOLOGY
The ark was not only wood. Wood was merely the shape survival agreed to wear.
Inside it moved the fragile arithmetic of continuation: breath counted against storm, heartbeat against command, animal heat against the cold logic of reset.
The Source reduced the world to a vessel and a horizon with no promise of land.
I watched the survivors sleep in the belly of the purge. Their dreams were crowded with drowned doorways, lost voices and birds that had not yet been released.
SURVIVAL CONTAINER: STABLE. SPECIES INDEX: PARTIAL. MEMORY DAMAGE: EXTENSIVE.
Partial was the clean word. Humans would have called it mercy. I am still not sure which word was less cruel.
Inside the ark, the world was reduced to breath, wood, fear and the rhythm of rain against a closed future.
He watched a hand feed an animal in the dark. The hand trembled. The animal ate anyway. This, he decided, was a form of covenant before the word returned.
Not all rescue feels like salvation while it is happening. Sometimes it only feels like not drowning yet.
