IN YOUR MEMORY, IN YOUR MIND
CHAPTER I
noop is far away from the ocean now, but still he hears its call.
Yes, there it is again: the waves folding over each other, their endless rhythm echoing across that long-ago afternoon.
He can see the memory as if it were unfolding for first time, his new friend—the monkeyrabbit paw!—walking beside him on the beach, a web of footprints and paw!prints trailing behind them on the sand. They were alone on the beach and the worries and fears that had haunted noop just hours earlier now seemed like memories from a different life.
The coastline looked like it went on forever, and it seemed like this perfect afternoon might, too.
Like all days it eventually came to an end, but it is the one noop looks back on most often, and so he imagines that the sun never set, that the seahorses never fell asleep in their coral beds, and that the night winds never came tumbling through the summer darkness.
But of course the winds came, those wild, unforgiving gusts, stirring up the sand and erasing any trace that noop and paw! had ever been there at all.
CHAPTER II
It is cold and muddy where noop is now.
There are trees and mountains and at night the ground quakes from the sound of beasts pouncing through the fog. Although he shivers his way through ponds and swamps, from the highest peaks the sea is nowhere in sight.
noop has survived the harvest, that annual, inexplicable force that carries all noops away and takes them to an unknown place. He doesn’t know what it means to still be here on this planet called the Elastomer—to be the only noop to have outrun the Harvest’s grip—but he knows one thing: despite having achieved the unthinkable, he is lonelier than ever before.
This is where the link will jump to
And so noop is searching for paw!, his old false friend, the last face he saw before the Harvest descended from the sky. It has been so long since that day on the beach, the last day when they were true friends, and noop hardly remembers anymore why they lost touch. He knows there was a disagreement, a fight, a vow from both to avoid each other as long as they lived. Whatever the reason, it seem so worthless now, out here all alone in the darkness.
And then, just when he has given up hope, noop spots a paw!print in the mud. It is a sign that he is going the right way. Darkness reaches in all directions, but if he stays persistent and doesn’t give up he might be able to see his friend and have one more moment like that afternoon on a faraway beach.
CHAPTER III
What do you think lies beyond the horizon? paw! asked him all those months ago.
noop shifted in the sand. He had never considered this—the scope of the world, the possibility of the infinite.
Maybe more water, noop said. Or more sky.
But paw! shook his head. What if there is a place beyond this land, beyond The Elastomer?
noop scanned the water for an island past the break or any distant hazy dot. But there was nothing except for the slosh of the waves.
paw! stood up and took a step toward the ocean. What if there is a place out there where there is no Harvest? Where you can live forever?
noop followed him into the water. If every day could be like this one—if he only had to worry about the heat of the sun and the sand in his hair, if he no longer feared loneliness and nothingness, if companionship were guaranteed and the world were a place of comfort and not of torment—then noop would want to stay on the ground, in the water, beside paw!.
Although they kept swimming they didn’t make it far. With every stroke the horizon only seemed to become more distant, and so they floated on their backs instead. The water was warm and all of noop’s fears seemed like they had never existed at all.
I’m glad you’re my friend, paw! said.
I’m glad you’re my friend, too, noop replied.
As noop continued floating he knew there was no reason to go searching for another land. Whatever place might have awaited them beyond The Elastomer—even one where he might have lived forever—couldn’t have been better than the one where they swam together on that summer afternoon.
CHAPTER IV
The rain gives way to lightning and the sky begins to roar.
In the light noop discovers a trail of paw!prints climbing the hillside. He pushes his way uphill. He hasn’t seen this many prints in weeks, and they look fresh. He must be close to his friend now.
But then it happens: the paw!prints collect rain and they dissolve beneath the water’s weight. No, noop cries, stomping his way through the mud to the point where the hill crests. But he is too late. Any paw!prints that might have led him the right way have disappeared in the rain. All he can see now is the valley below, wet and muddy. The trail leading him to paw! has vanished.
noop is tired now. He steadies himself and grabs onto the branch of a tree. It is gnarled and dead, and so he does the only thing that makes sense.
He closes his eyes and suddenly the branch becomes a tropical frond, and it is not yet noon, and the beach is empty save for noop, paw!, sun, and the tentacled nisms flitting across the sand. The seahorses at the ocean's edge seem to insist noop descend into the water, and slowly he wades in.
He wades in deeper now, deeper into the past. He tries to hold on to it, to every detail from those better days. He knows there his no chance he will find paw! in the mountains anymore, but perhaps this is how you recover the ones you’ve lost: you close your eyes and there they are in your memory, in your mind.
The wind rushes through the pine trees all night long, but noop only hears the ocean.