Sentient

Song: Burton Cunnings --Break it to Them Gently

Word: Exodus

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Fifteen

He had been a boy, naïve, enthralled by everything that lay in the outside world. Restless. With each set of the sun, dreams of life beyond the horizon become more vivid, growing slowly like cancer, taking over him until all he could do was dream them and desire. Beyond the mountains, beyond the vast empty prairies where his village was a mere dot. Beyond it all was a thriving metropolis, where horses were raced, where ships were set to sail, riding the waves, exploring corners of the world, bringing strange spices and lush hides aboard them. They were beautiful ships, white satin ballooning out as the wind caught it, sailing out and beyond on the mass of the blue ocean.

Each time the breeze blew from the north, it whispered in his ears of all the extraordinary things that lay beyond, just waiting for him, calling out to him to come closer.

Fifteen--it had been the time he met the whistling storyteller, with his burly shoulders and twinkling eyes, his hearty laugh which left a pleasant aftertaste, even as the fire burned out and they all returned home, their minds having explored something so exciting that sleep would not come for hours, instead stars danced under their eyelids, imaginations racing. He always sat by the fire those evenings, rapt with the storyteller’s accountings of the land beyond. There they did not ride on wagons, no sir; they had carriages led by proud looking horses, the storyteller told them.

His father owned only a donkey. And it was the waggon the boy sat on, if ever. But the storyteller had a horse, an immense creature with a soft, but taut, brown hide, and a lofty head. The storyteller even named the horse; the boy had been much fascinated to find out. The storyteller called it Gerald. He referred to him like a human. Gerald. The boy laughed; people did not give animals people names. That wasn’t right; it just wasn’t how things were.

The storyteller told him that in the Sopta they did. Animals even had a constitution written for them. A constitution? What was that, he asked. The storyteller patted him on the back and laughed. You’ll see the constitution played out at Sopta. Why do you not come with me? The storyteller asked him.

Go away with him? What a delicious idea, his heart started to flutter. For a moment the boy imagined himself, riding away to the north, toward Sopta. He imagined himself upon a ship sailing out to sea, his air blowing in the air. What did the sea look like? Reality brought him to the ground harshly and he blinked away the pictures his imagination had created. He looked back at the small farmhouse, a warm orange glow evading from the windows, his family sitting inside, probably waiting for him to come have his supper. The boy sighed. I can’t.

The storyteller laughed and patted his back. The storyteller seemed to do a lot of that, laughing and patting people on the back. Maybe people of the north tended to adopt this queer habit. Maybe later, boy, the storyteller said.

The storyteller left the next morning, sweeping the villagers a last goodbye with his hat as he thundered away on Gerald toward the mountains and what lay beyond it. The boy stayed put when the others drifted back. He sat there for along time, watching as the stranger disappeared down the prairie, his form shrinking away till it was nothing on the rippling greenery of the plains.

Twenty-five

He had been a young man, caught amidst the possibility of a future of being part of the quickly changing world, and the possibility of a family. There were two crossroads before him, each heavy and demanding. An adventurous future or a family? He took to sitting by the fading farm house, looking towards the towering mountains that concealed what his heart desired most to see, Sopta.

His fiancée was a shy girl, pretty and young; still a child of the world, innocent and unsuspecting of trials life could hurl at her. He wondered if after their nuptial she’d steal away with him to Sopta, to find a new home, a future.

A future among the scholars, the sailors, the merchants, and the busy bodies who skilled their crafts and had something to offer the world. They were all an essential ingredient of a wonderful, bustling, thriving metropolis, each doing their part to greaten the heights of mankind. And there he sat, among the shadows of a fading farm house, living just for the sake of being alive.

He asked her one day, if she’d ever heard of Sopta. She denied, covering her red mouth to suppress her giggles. He looked towards the purple mountains and described to her all that lay beyond them, all that the story teller had told him years ago. Her eyes widened, fascinated that there were things possible such as those he related to her. But it was all a thrilling story for her. Nothing else. Not an enticing and possible reality.

Each time he rested his head on the pillow, he tried his hardest to clear his mind, to hush the whisperings of his yearning heart. And each rising of the day, when he milked the cow, he’d tell himself that his art lay in milking the cow, it was his calling. He tried his best to train himself to look forward to the daily ordeals of the life he led, trying his best to walk in the footsteps of his father. But his footprints desired to make their own route.

His father and mother had sought her out of all the girls in the village. Like all obedient sons, he bowed his head and slipped on the betrothal band. He’d taken to turning it, feeling it’s coldness against his lips, smoothness of it against his cheeks, struggling to like the feel of pressure it had around his ring finger, striving to look forward to what it represented.

But he felt as if he was trying to fit an odd piece in a puzzle, a piece that did not belong to the puzzle, a piece no matter how much forced into the puzzle would never fit perfectly and smoothly, simply because it didn’t belong there.

He left early dawn, long before the village had woken; sleep yawning in his mouth and a strange hunger tugging at his stomach. The whispering prairie lay gaping before him, and he hurried his donkey. He’d named Gorj after learning that animals were named in Sopta. Gorj was their only donkey, and a forbearing guiltiness, like a heavy stone sat in his stomach as he watched Gorj’s grey neck nodding ahead as they lumbered forward. But, he couldn’t walk barefoot all the way to Sopta, he knew that much.

What would his father say when he woke up, and found him gone, and then also the donkey missing? Who would milk the cow, who would carry the bales of hay, herd the lambs, feed the animals now that he was leaving? His father would be quite alone. His father was on the brink of old age, how would he cope without the aid of his youthful son? What would his mother do? She’d wail and cry most likely, the way she’d done when the old shoemaker had passed away silently one night. What would his fiancée think? Would her smiling mouth for once turn into a frown, would difficulty finally thrust itself on her shoulders, forcing out the woman in her?

He looked ahead of him. This freedom was not thrilling like he'd supposed, it was burdensome.

They would cry for him, like he was dead or worst. But he wasn’t dead, he was still living, just not a part of their lives anymore.

Part Two coming up soon.