a short story by yours truly

Ema watches the field with an unfocused gaze; the gray skies blur with the gray ground and the gray ground blurs with the gray water. Ema prefers to look at this world with her eyes out of focus. She finds it less bright, less garish, though it’s already dull in focus.

A sliver of wind floats its way through the air, and Ema’s long, black hair is pushed upwards. Ema wonders, briefly, if her hair would rather join the wind than be tethered to her head. Ema wishes that she could join the wind. Flesh is very restricting.

It’s the time of day in which the moon and the sun are both visible on the horizon. It’s like a waiting queue with only two people or a merry go round. One goes up, the other goes down, and so on and so forth. Ema likes the rhythm of it all, and she used to track the moon’s phases on her little calendar. Now she doesn’t need to track them on the calendar; she has them memorized.

Another shape is on the horizon too. A slender figure, slowly making its way around the earth. Ema blinks. It’s still there. She fastens her grip on the wooden handle of the net she holds and lightly but confidently makes her way towards the shape, careful not to startle it. Her footsteps are heavy, and yet they hit the ground without emitting a sound. Only the dead grass acknowledges her motion by flattening its lifeless self against the earth.

Eventually Ema comes up in front of the shape. There is always this moment, right before…she hates this moment. It is the moment when she locks eyes with the creature, and its eyes are so big and brown and confused. “Someone help me,” it says, and Ema wishes she could, but she has not been given the net to bring the creature to safety. Or, she has, in a sense. It’s just not the traditional idea of safety.

She raises the net above her head and with a singular swift motion, the net falls onto the creature and it whimpers silently. Ema drops the net handle and it lands on the ground with a soft thump. She reaches in between the soft netting to scratch the creature behind its silky white ears, and it leans forward to sniff her, and Ema steps back. She must never let the creatures get too close. There are many worlds in which one can exist, and the creatures and Ema are meant for different ones. This is only a brief period of crossing over.

The creature elicits the sound which the wind makes; a whistling noise of sorts. Ema squeezes the creature’s neck to dislodge the stale air stuck there, and the creature wheezes from lack of air, but Ema knows soon enough it will realize that it isn’t breathing anyways and it has no need for air. She looks away from its eyes, open very wide, from its mouth, open just slightly, but she can’t escape its frightened gaze. She can feel its eyes watching the side of her head, silently begging her to stop.

Ema eventually listens - this is a lie, actually, she’s been listening the whole time, just not acting upon what she hears or perceives.