Everyone else was asleep. It was only around eight or nine at night, but who could blame them? We’d spent the entire day hiking through knee-high undergrowth and mist-braided pines. Anyone would be tired. I was tired.
My friends and I had made camp in the skeleton of an old house, which save for its foundations, had almost crumbled away. The rest of our company were all tucked into respective corners — Rune with his knees drawn tight to his chest like a pill bug, and Gail leaning against a pile of bricks that might have been a wall once upon a time, her hood drawn low.
But I wasn’t in the mood to leave the world just yet, though my muscles, my eyelids, they begged me to lie down. If I focused on our campfire and nothing else, I could numb the encroaching exhaustion. This wasn’t a logical instinct. I knew I needed energy for tomorrow. But I had this feeling that the day wasn’t done, that there was something I needed to be awake for.
So I let myself become mesmerized by our campfire’s neon, phosphorous, molten glow: that saturation which painters could only dream of. It was calmness and warmth, yet destruction and heat. I could sit and breathe and never get tired of staring into its depths.
The problem with campfires is that they distort the nighttime. It is those glowing embers that turn darkness into blindness and shadows to black ink. Our circle of slumbering fur-wrapped bodies was an island of light, and the forest a great impenetrable ocean.
Maybe that was it: I didn’t trust this darkness and its shrouded trees. It contained some other primordial awareness besides that of my friends and me. I fished a scarf from the bag at my feet and put it on. I wasn’t cold, but the bare skin of my neck felt especially vulnerable, facing out where the light didn’t reach.
The cat, which we’d finally named Mocha after days of arguments and deliberation, was the only one who had stayed up to keep me company. We stared into the darkness side by side, her eyes flashing with the fire’s reflected glow.
The gentle crackling of logs losing their carbon dioxide to the night air, the murmurs of frogs and crickets, almost fractured my resolve to stay awake and watchful. Just as my chin was about to fall, as my eyes waved a white flag and surrendered in their war against sleep, Mocha emitted a long low growl of warning.
I stared down at her. She was such a sweet cat, always riding on our shoulders and playing with shoelaces. I had never heard her make that noise before. She sounded . . . menacing. Yes, tonight our kitty was a wild creature, her every muscle a straight-backed soldier awaiting a command of action.
My breathing shallowed just slightly as I raised my head and searched the trees once more. There was something there, something I never would have noticed had it not moved, something inconceivably vast.
I caught sight of ponderous, spindly legs taller than many me’s stacked one atop another. And above all that, skin and patchy fur stretched taut over a bloated rib cage. The thing towered. It cast a shadow over the treetops. I imagined it had to duck that skeletal head to avoid entangling its antlers in the moon.
I did not breathe. I did not comprehend. I had never felt so urgently still. Like an astronaut just beginning to grasp the enormity of galaxies. Like a diver encountering a blue whale in some gloomy ocean trench.
The earth did not tremble as it passed; the thing did not leave large conspicuous hoof prints on the forest floor. Except for my own unblinking eyes and pounding heart, the beast moved unnoticed through the woods. It was part of the scenery, and even as I watched, its hide blurred in and out of the branches and shadows. The moonlight caught a few dislodged pine needles as they spiraled to the forest floor, and that was that. The monster was reabsorbed into the night.
Minutes drained away and I didn’t notice them go. Mocha’s ears slowly unflattened and she licked her chest with all the carelessness she could muster, as if to say, “Were you scared? I wasn’t scared.”
Across the campfire, Gail stirred and I jumped, heart catapulting painfully. She opened her eyes, regarding me, and in that moment I thought she knew, that she had seen — for how could I possibly be the only one to witness something so unimaginable? Gail watched me a moment more, her gaze sleepy yet clear. Then she asked, “Can you pass me that water bottle?”
I handed it to her robotically, a human on auto pilot. I opened my mouth several times, but it was as if my mind had run out of words and my lungs were devoid of any air. My memories were locked away inside my chest and the key was hidden or buried or had never existed at all.
But as she murmured her thanks and the forest settled into its peacefulness once again, I found I didn’t feel frustration or disappointment. Instead, it was as if our campfire were fueled by this fearfully exciting secret. I glowed quietly, knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, because who knew what else I might see if I kept my eyes wide open.
My friends and I had made camp in the skeleton of an old house, which save for its foundations, had almost crumbled away. The rest of our company were all tucked into respective corners — Rune with his knees drawn tight to his chest like a pill bug, and Gail leaning against a pile of bricks that might have been a wall once upon a time, her hood drawn low.
But I wasn’t in the mood to leave the world just yet, though my muscles, my eyelids, they begged me to lie down. If I focused on our campfire and nothing else, I could numb the encroaching exhaustion. This wasn’t a logical instinct. I knew I needed energy for tomorrow. But I had this feeling that the day wasn’t done, that there was something I needed to be awake for.
So I let myself become mesmerized by our campfire’s neon, phosphorous, molten glow: that saturation which painters could only dream of. It was calmness and warmth, yet destruction and heat. I could sit and breathe and never get tired of staring into its depths.
The problem with campfires is that they distort the nighttime. It is those glowing embers that turn darkness into blindness and shadows to black ink. Our circle of slumbering fur-wrapped bodies was an island of light, and the forest a great impenetrable ocean.
Maybe that was it: I didn’t trust this darkness and its shrouded trees. It contained some other primordial awareness besides that of my friends and me. I fished a scarf from the bag at my feet and put it on. I wasn’t cold, but the bare skin of my neck felt especially vulnerable, facing out where the light didn’t reach.
The cat, which we’d finally named Mocha after days of arguments and deliberation, was the only one who had stayed up to keep me company. We stared into the darkness side by side, her eyes flashing with the fire’s reflected glow.
The gentle crackling of logs losing their carbon dioxide to the night air, the murmurs of frogs and crickets, almost fractured my resolve to stay awake and watchful. Just as my chin was about to fall, as my eyes waved a white flag and surrendered in their war against sleep, Mocha emitted a long low growl of warning.
I stared down at her. She was such a sweet cat, always riding on our shoulders and playing with shoelaces. I had never heard her make that noise before. She sounded . . . menacing. Yes, tonight our kitty was a wild creature, her every muscle a straight-backed soldier awaiting a command of action.
My breathing shallowed just slightly as I raised my head and searched the trees once more. There was something there, something I never would have noticed had it not moved, something inconceivably vast.
I caught sight of ponderous, spindly legs taller than many me’s stacked one atop another. And above all that, skin and patchy fur stretched taut over a bloated rib cage. The thing towered. It cast a shadow over the treetops. I imagined it had to duck that skeletal head to avoid entangling its antlers in the moon.
I did not breathe. I did not comprehend. I had never felt so urgently still. Like an astronaut just beginning to grasp the enormity of galaxies. Like a diver encountering a blue whale in some gloomy ocean trench.
The earth did not tremble as it passed; the thing did not leave large conspicuous hoof prints on the forest floor. Except for my own unblinking eyes and pounding heart, the beast moved unnoticed through the woods. It was part of the scenery, and even as I watched, its hide blurred in and out of the branches and shadows. The moonlight caught a few dislodged pine needles as they spiraled to the forest floor, and that was that. The monster was reabsorbed into the night.
Minutes drained away and I didn’t notice them go. Mocha’s ears slowly unflattened and she licked her chest with all the carelessness she could muster, as if to say, “Were you scared? I wasn’t scared.”
Across the campfire, Gail stirred and I jumped, heart catapulting painfully. She opened her eyes, regarding me, and in that moment I thought she knew, that she had seen — for how could I possibly be the only one to witness something so unimaginable? Gail watched me a moment more, her gaze sleepy yet clear. Then she asked, “Can you pass me that water bottle?”
I handed it to her robotically, a human on auto pilot. I opened my mouth several times, but it was as if my mind had run out of words and my lungs were devoid of any air. My memories were locked away inside my chest and the key was hidden or buried or had never existed at all.
But as she murmured her thanks and the forest settled into its peacefulness once again, I found I didn’t feel frustration or disappointment. Instead, it was as if our campfire were fueled by this fearfully exciting secret. I glowed quietly, knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, because who knew what else I might see if I kept my eyes wide open.