Astere River

I remember nothing. I remember me, I remember who I am, I know, but my memory feels blank, empty, white. Nothing around me is white, in fact, everything around me is very normal, but my mind is a glowing entity, always smiling, that talks to me, and points me in the direction I would like to go. I can start to see this character, who constantly has one finger pointing in the right direction, guides me.1

"Go over there, by that rock, and we'll sort things out," he says.2

I looked at the rock, and I stumbled as I realized it. My vision. How I perceive it. What is this.3

Everything is a black dot, a marble, everything is. It's all one. A speck of dirt. No, an atom. A particle. A blip.4

"Yes, that's interesting. It'll take you a bit to get used to," my cyclopsed mind-lurker says. "Okay. Rock. Concentrate on the rock."5

I can't concentrate on it. I can't even look at it yet. The flowers are prisms and the clouds are movies, the trees treat me to one-sided morse code conversations. The wind bustles past me on its way, always late for the weatherman's forecasts, the leaves hitching rides. And the bark from the trees, little cities of-6

"Okay, are you done yet?" The cyclops asks sternly. Suddenly he's not the cyclops, but has sprouted a dog's head.7

"Anubis?" I think.8

"That's right. I'm being. I'll take you around and show you- what. Oh, you finally looked at the..."9

The rock. It was a story. A heartbreaking one, but it ended well. After going through years of being at an odd place in the river's current, the water had one day broken straight through to the other side of it, sending it down the river to a smoother spot, where it was polished to a smooth shine, and one day plucked out of the water and placed on the petrified tree stump where it now sat, gleaming in the bright, early sunshine.10

"Quite a tale, huh?" Anubis looked at the rock with fond knowing. "Can you guess who found it?"11

I looked at it harder, but could not. 12

"Okay." His hand, finger pointing upwards, curled into a cup as if to hold water. He held it back behind his head.13

Bits of energy popped in the air and spread to the ground- old wood glew with radiance at the energy that abounded in it. The river was almost intolerably bright, and I wanted to-14

Suddenly I was surrounded in luscious liquid, my mind was somehow brighter than before and I swam. I could clearly see Anubis' cupped hand and giddily I took in all he had to offer for me. I saw the bubbles, blooming with fresh oxygen, and I saw its progress through the fish's sleek bodies. I saw the perfect bodies of the content beavers splashing in the river, surging it with even more life. And it infused me in turn, as I spun and explored through its currents. Each wave was a flash of news, each bit of news good: Somewhere, someone was learning something, making the right choices, and galloping their mind for information. Nothing receded but the small, playfully shy cockles at the bottom.15

When I next heard Anubis, he had one eye, which was magnified until it was my world. "This," he said in a booming voice, "is what I have to offer." The eye rapidly started becoming new, intricate designs. I realized it was my own. As the pupil dilated, I saw it become a firetruck, a midget clown, a pin-up of Andrew Jackson, a bowl of forget-me-not's, A salvation army store, a mosquito bite, and each object looking so much like the last, until everything at once bloomed into my pupil, and then it was a white blip. 16

"Okay," Anubis said. He was sitting next to me on a glass stool; it was a tree stump. I was sitting on a glass stone.17

"I'll send you back through the everglade way." And so, I was vortexed back into my mind, and awoke to a shining morning.18