THE FOUNDLINGS OF NIRVANA
LUNCHTIME SHORTS
BOOK THREE
THE END IS JUST THE BEGINNING
LOUANN CARROLL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Published by Majestic Books
Penn Valley, California
Copyright 2015 by Louann Carroll
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
Other books by Louann Carroll
The Gemini Series
Gemini Rising, Book One
The Light and the Flame, Book Two
Book Three—Coming Soon
A Shadow of Time
Shadowlands
Innocent Blood
The Foundling series
Jenny’s Tale
And the Sea Sings
The End is Only the Beginning
January 200040
I answer the sea by creeping closer on spindly legs that barely maintain traction. I pause at the shore unsure of my next move while the siren song stirs me, calling me forth. I scan the waves as they dash against a glassy shore. Bits of grayish foam and oily slime blend with flotsam left behind by the dead and dying. There is no scent of a briny sea. Instead, there is only a sulfuric scum floating upon the sea’s surface as it recedes.
The world is changed.
There is no color.
A Maitree squirms from the water and worms its way on shore. It appears much more adept at movement than I. Its body is slimmer and it weaves back and forth across the glass like a snake. Impossible I know, but there it is. My remembrances tell me the tale of a reptile that once condemned this world to ashes. The prediction came true, as there is nothing left of the earth as it once was.
The Maitree’s one bright green eye looks up as a long lash sweeps glassy bits of sand from its cornea. I think sand because that’s what it was before the surface of the earth reached three thousand two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. A gift from the myriad explosions of atom bombs humanity threw at each other after the change was complete.
I thank them for that.
Not.
Though it is not a snake, the Maitree slithers atop the glass in an undulating motion. Like the others, it is colorless and it can withstand the heat of the two suns for a short time. I glance away then back again, thinking I catch a glint of red. The creature speaks so I give it my attention. It is only through me that the Maitree can see itself.
“The sea loves such as me,” it says.
The creature grooms itself with a wide pink tongue dripping with acid while I commence thinking. I believe the Maitree implies I am not welcome in the waters. I cannot speak aloud as my mouth has grown shut, but the Maitree and I hear each other’s thoughts, just as I hear the others like me.
The ones who live below.
In the earth.
In the dark.
It will not be long before they will hear my thoughts and I must be careful. It would not do me well to be overheard as I think differently.
Thanks be to whomever Shim may be.
I attempt to shrug, forgetting my scaly body. A thick plated shell much like concrete blocks encompasses me. Already, I am tired from the journey that started just a few yards away. I turn, my feet plodding in glass, and glance back at the hole in the earth I am forever leaving.
Good riddance!
Gravity pulls at the scales that cover me making me far heavier than I am when burrowing in the earth. Tunnel digging is one of those things, good for the body and bad for the mind. If I continue with my dark existence, I shall go mad.
If I am not already.
Before I step into the sea, I think of the young woman I was, changed by her parents to survive a climate shift and a nuclear war that destroyed the world, but not life itself. That, however, was eons ago. I have passed through many seasons since then.
Yet, my remembrances bring back the smell of the sea and if I try hard enough I can hear birds in the air, feel a soft breeze against my cheek, the arms of a young man secure around me. Love, lust, and want.
Having spent as much time in the sun as possible, I have two choices. Go into the sea or return to my burrow. As I turn back, water laps at my feet, warm as only the sea can be from twin suns. It eases the pain as I say good-bye to the wound in the earth I created. My remembrances grow clearer with each passing moment. I used to be tall, long limbed, beautiful, perhaps. No, I was beautiful. Now I am mutant, recombinant, chattel of the white robes.
No, no.
I remind myself I haven’t seen white robes for a long time. It is possible they no longer exist. And I have not been reptilian for many eons. Each season brings a new change. Yet I abide.
I shift my back plates and move farther into the sea. I am excited, anticipatory. The sensual water wraps around my bulky form and lifts me high upon the waves. This, I did not expect. I float, enjoying the sense of being free.
Yes, this is a good decision I make.
I wonder what I look like. In the earth, there are no mirrors and no one like me has ever gone near the water or so I’ve heard. I wonder if I am strong enough to see myself the way I am and not the way I think I am. Can I do this? Is it possible to embrace this new me?
My one eye cascades down from the top of my head to my forefront. I close the lid frightened of what I might see, but it isn’t for long. Curiosity is my downfall. At once, I lift my eye as high as I can then let it sink slowly toward the ocean. Two tufts of lashes line the channel my eye uses to travel. I know this because every now and then a lash sticks in my pupil. Icky for sure, I note, but not disgusting.
Do I have strength enough to be brave?
I allow my eye to finish its journey as the sea captures my gaze. The hideous grayness of the ocean makes me nauseous. It is dark and fathomless even as it encompasses me with its warmth. And then…
I see me.
No, no, no.
The sea is a mirror reflecting back light from the suns, two bright orbs born when Earth’s original light source split into two. I am sure this me would not be here when the suns went below the horizon, would it? It is only through others that I see myself, but perhaps I am wrong.
Praise be to whomever Shim may be.
I stretch out as I float and my mind drifts. In this state, I begin to lose the me that I am. I am becoming. I am the water. The water is me. Fear slips away. I am the suns, I am the earth, I am me. I exist, but what is around me may not. If I am all things, I cannot be a figment of an imagination. I am real, as real as the Maitree. That is, if the Maitree is real and that begs the question, what is reality?
Perhaps we reside in a two dimensional universe and if I cannot see something then that something I cannot see is not there. It is only when I look that I bring something to life. It is done with intent not by accident.
Strange to have such thoughts. Odd to feel so alive. I see through the Maitree, the Oblanger, and Donod.
I pull myself back to the present, take the love of Shim, and allow my eye to travel to its end while I still can. Though I cannot see my body, I see what is left of my face reflected in the water. No nose, no mouth, pink skin ben
eath my chin and metallic-gray plates that grow over my head protecting me from what the two suns seek. Which is death. One sun is entirely too close. My face, while ugly, it is not horrific. I think of a pig covered in scales, its mouth sewn shut, and nostrils plugged.
Sorrow overwhelms me.
As scientists, my mother and father knew climate change was coming. They electrified the masses, even the government with tales of a new world, one filled with cataclysmic events. They sought a magical chemical something that could help human life survive.
And then, it happened. Great seas with pounding waves rose up against the cities and destroyed them. The western world had no rain and the eastern world too much. Nothing grew in heat and nothing grew in snow and perpetual rain. There was no middle ground just one or the other or the other. And then the bombs came.
My parents created the only drug to hasten transmogrification and to hopefully, protect humanity against radiation. There was one experimental dose. They injected it into me and by the time I realized what was happening it was too late. Did they really think I would want to go on alone?
I am forever changed.
Human beings of great ego believed they, such puny insignificant creatures, could affect the weather. This earth, my earth, has seen many changes in the past and will into the future. It has nothing to do with humans and never will. It, we, are far more powerful than humankind would ever imagine.
I say we as if that means something. This type of thinking confuses me. I believe this includes the Maitree and maybe the Donod as I’ve seen out of their eyes.
Over the millennia, I evolve with the birds of the sky and the animals of the field, but as far as I can ascertain, I am the only one who has remembrances.
Praise be to whomever Shim may be.
My remembrances grow clearer as I float. I relax and my body spreads out among the waves. I think the others who look like me, think like me, may not be like me. They watch, they follow, but perhaps I am wrong. Maybe I am the only me there is and they are non-reflective automatons living in a sick and demented world. Figments of my own imagination.
Life seeks its own and there is no one I care to find. Maitrees and other small-celled organisms communicate, I think. Or do I put their words in my head? I assume I hear them in my mind. Maybe, there is nothing but me, putting words where I need to hear them. Otherwise, I am alone.
Anguish combines with sorrow.
My thoughts spread out upon the ocean. Lightning strikes a remaining scale—there is no pain. Instead, the mighty fork from the sky sharpens my mind as it flows through me. The last of the scales fall away. They float lazily upon the surface of the sea before drifting downward toward the sea floor. I wonder what kind of creatures live below. My skin grows thin and allows the water to permeate what cells are left.
This is to die, I think. Once again another change and yet, I am still me and this is just another step in the process of life. It is easy not to think, so I let go a little more. I sense the sea within me and about me, its warmth recharging me and even, I think, changing me.
Praise be to whomever Shim may be.
It is odd I think those words. Whomever is Shim? My thoughts scatter and I wonder what lies beneath me. I float. I am not sure where I begin and where I end. I am everything and nothing. Time passes and I sleep. In my mindless preoccupation in the land of nod, I realize I am the only one. There are no others like me.
When I awake, there is more of me than before. I have spread far and beyond the glassy beach from which I came. I am beyond huge, beyond being just me. I am the sea! I am the Maitree, I am the others. I see all, feel all, but I search my remembrances realizing I know little about this new creature I am.
In fact, I know nothing at all, yet I am all that is. I am life coming to know itself. Life passes through me, or what would be me if I had boundaries. Again, I think. I am new yet still me. I am all and I must make others come aware.
It is imperative!
Otherwise…
I am alone.
Again.
The change is easy and welcoming. Little oxygen remains in the oceans. I sense volcanic rifts deep in the sea spewing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. With just a thought I can manipulate a volcanoes reaction even an earthquake’s strike.
I sense the world around me.
The sea loses ever more oxygen. This world is toxic with hydrogen sulfide, a noxious poison produced by microorganisms that don’t need oxygen to survive.
I feel them.
I feed them.
I am them.
I know them.
I live on.
Praise be to whomever Shim may be.