Notes From Another World: The Red Villages
The people at the edge of the world aren’t any different from you and me.
//
The people at the edge of the world aren’t any different from you and me. They do not know what happens when they die. They do not know why they believe what they believe. They believe things used to be better.
//
It was once a city. There isn’t yet a word for what it is now.
//
The people of the first village say because their houses are entirely made of mirrors, they are never lonely. You ask them how that can make up for intimacy, companionship, otherness. They say you sound like their tenth reflection, who bothers all the others.
//
The people of the second village have music playing in their homes without cease. They believe as a matter of fact that if it were to be turned off, they would go deaf.
//
Everybody says the river will punish you. Halfway through its icy waters an undercurrent grabs you. You are dragged down, bashed against impossibly shaped rocks. When you escape all the stars are different and the love notes you keep by your heart are destroyed.
//
Everybody in the third village has the same nightmare, night after night. It’s too unpleasant to discuss. But still, when people move into the village and don’t share the nightmare, they are shunned.
//
Every night the mayor of the fourth village lucid dreams to relive his day. He fixes his mistakes. He’s gentler to the weak. He’s wittier at parties. When he wakes up he forgets the day and remembers the dream instead. He is the happiest man in the world.
//
The people of the fifth village believe that because all things have beginnings and endings, all things have desires.
//
On the mountain passes between the villages, above the haze, you can make out your home star in the south sky, its light turned blue by the dyson sphere imprisoning it. You do not know if you will ever fly around it again.
//
The people of the sixth village think the apocalypse will come in bits and pieces. Your neighbour’s bees will leave but yours won’t. The sun will still rise but it won’t always be on. The rivers will start turning red but it will only be a soft, pastel, summer pink.
//
The people of the seventh village think the sun is very fragile, a sin or a mistake will put it out. When this doesn’t happen, it is a sign of the sun’s infinite mercy.
//
When you lie in the flowers of the eighth village you forget important things. What you live for. What you promised. What you must become.
There are others in the flowers much further along than you. They have forgotten to warn you you’ll soon forget how to stand.