oasis living is free
Balthazar watches me put a canister on the ground. “What’s that?” He asks.
“Napalm.”
“Oooh dear. I’ll get Darzee.”
“I wasn’t planning on using it on you, you know.”
The sun is directly overhead, and the Oasis bakes. The blanket of heat is mildly comforting, but not enough to distract me. The Bonfire before me burns without heat. The symbol of fire is all I need, and it won’t throw off warmth until the sun sets. The river slinks by behind the Bonfire, quiet and smooth, looking to keep out of my attention.
Darzee and Balathazar approach me cautiously. “Why the napalm, beloved?” Darzee asks.
“Because I’m going to find today and kill it,” I reply. I don’t get how the hose and nozzle attaches to the canister, and while I don’t want to burn the Oasis down, I’m also not in a mood to figure out logistics.
“You can’t kill today,” Darzee says, a little timidly. “You’re still in it.”
“My Oasis, my rules.”
“Um,” Darzee says. She looks at Balthazar. He shrugs.
“How can we help?” Balthazar asks.
I throw down the hose. “You can tell me what in the hell went wrong!”
They start making reassuring noises and come forward to hug and hold me and I step back. “Guys. I love you, I really do. But not right now. I need answers.”
Darzee sucks in her breath. “Anger, huh? You’re moving up the emotional scale pretty fast these days.”
“You’re going to figure it out, you know,” Balthazar says.
When I first built the Oasis, I created a form for myself. I was so disconnected with all my internal states back then that I had a hard time seeing from my own vantage point internally. The Oasis always appeared as sort of a diorama that I, like the the other beings in the Oasis, moved through. I would observe the character I designated as myself moving from a high vantage point.
I have built up a sense of self (and of Self) again, and now live comfortably in my own skin in the Oasis. But that empty vessel I created to pretend to be me in was a Huntress, with white skin and hair and white leathers. And Balthazar’s words of platitudinal reassurance made me so angry that I became the Huntress in an instant, and pulled a long, wicked white glass knife out of the sheath at my hip. The Bonfire flared up with a roar and poured forth heat, and the stream frothed and ran at a wild pace, burbling and crashing over rocks.
I can see Balthazar swallowing hard. I’m watching the muscles in his neck twitch, his Adam’s apple bob.
“You have unfinished business,” Darzee announces and grabs me by the arm. I swing at her but she steps aside before my knife comes anywhere near her. It’s all the time she needed; we are back on the plain and the warrior is there. She has nearly killed the many-tentacled thing. It bleeds and bellows pitifully.
I know exactly what to do. Wielding the knife like a machete, I rush the warrior. She twirls to meet me and cold iron screeches against the white glass. For a few moments we fence, and I feel thrill and bloodlust chase down every vein and capillary. And then I let it take me over and I press her hard, and she bleeds. The warrior falls back, and I cut her and I cut her and I cut her.
She never says a word. She never asks for mercy. Her face never changes one iota from a fixed, grim mien. Not even when I beat aside her blade and run her through, punching right through her armor. Screaming, I bring her down and pin her to the ground with my thrust. She lays motionless, her eyes fixed upon me. She makes no move toward the white glass blade.
“That’s right,” I say. “Stay there and shut up.” My hands and forearms are covered in her blood. I stand and go over to the many-tentacled thing. I rub the blood of her enemy in her wounds, and the thing no longer bleeds. The bellowing stops, and silence descends on the plain. I stand. Darzee is watching me, and Balthazar is here too. He’s brought Ishmael, and Bagheera has tagged along.
I want to tell them to go away. It is my head, mine! And they had no right to stand there so *opaquely* and not be helpful.
Of course, I’d turn on them if they tried.
“Great Stone Dragon,” I say.
Great Stone Dragon, or Tau for short, followed me home from an Asian art exhibit in Portland that I went to one day. I still don’t know what piece he was hiding in, but a few hours after the exhibit, he playfully got my attention. He’d been traveling with the exhibit for a number of years, waiting for someone he liked to come along. Turns out he really liked me.
I’d always wished to be friends with a dragon.
He appears next to me in his man-shaped form. He is a water dragon, so he is as blue as Balathzar is red. His features are slightly indistinct, and the form rather resembles a man made out of blue clay. It is a convenience to me, nothing more.
“Tau. Thank you.” He presence is so calming. I can almost hear the wash of waves or the run of a river when I stand near him. I am suddenly so, so tired. I lean against him, and he wraps us both in a richly-colored silk robe.
“I need help,” I say in his ear. “Please.”
“Come,” he says, and leads me back over to the many-tentacled thing. We stand over her. She doesn’t move.
“What are you?” I ask.
“I don’t remember. I told you what I know.”
I feel the faint stirrings of anger again. “Shut UP. Yes you do. You are what you are. Be what you are, right now. I command you.”
Tau raises an eye ridge at me, and the many-tentacled thing begins to moan and shake.
“STOP IT! I am tired of dramatics. Take the form of whatever you were born into my Oasis as.”
There is a short, sharp earthquake as the Oasis shifts and groans to support the sudden change. I fall into Tau and he steadies me. The plain is a meadow and not barren, but filled with flowers and butterflies and soap bubbles. The many-tentacled thing is gone, and instead a thin little fairy lies motionless on the ground.
The warrior growls like a cat in heat but does not move.
“Oh, you fixed me!” The fairy jumps up and claps her cute little glowy hands together. I hate her with all the hate that I can muster.
“I killed the wrong monster,” I said. The fairy pouts.
Tau rubs my arm gently. “It is much deeper than that.”
“They lie to me with every word and motion. All I know is that they hate each other.”
“Are you sure?” Tau asks. “If nothing is as it seems with them, how can that be true?”
Thoughtful, I raise my arm. The warrior is lifted by my will and floats over to us. I yank my sword out of her abdomen. The fairy recoils.
“They were both one,” I say. Tau nods. I am so tired now. “Tau, could you help me here?”
He steps forward and mutters some harsh syllables. There is a loud shriek like a braking train, and they are merged into one. The Oasis groans again.
This time, there is moonlight and a wide, circular pool. It reflects the stars, or perhaps the stars are in the pool. Clever rock formations line the pool, and deer wander through this small clearing in the deep woods. I sit on one of the stones. Tau kisses the top of my head. A hand rests on my shoulder, and I look up to see Ishmael smiling down at me.
“You doubt,” he said. “Oh my love, how can you doubt when you have come so far that you can do this?”
And on his words the waters of the pool froth and part and rise up to form the thin figure of a woman made of water. The gems in the crown on my head shine softly in pleased remembrance of her, but I do not remember.
“Who are you?” I ask. I feel inelegant to her graceful arc and demeanor, but I have so little energy left to spare. I have no room for delicacy.
“I am your star,” she says. “Your guiding star. The star you wish on.”
I rub my forehead. “Someone? Please? Small words.”
“When do you wish on a star?” Ishmael asks with a vaguely rhetorical air.
“When you want something,” I reply.
Tau leans into me. “You only wish on a star when you have hope that the thing you wish for could come true. Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother wishing, would you?”
Darzee comes up from behind and puts her arms around me. “You have been able to think positively. You’ve even been able to have faith. But you haven’t had hope that things will work out for a very, very, *very* long time.” I wrap her hands, laced gently together and resting on my collarbone, in mine.
“And the warrior and the many-tentacled thing?”
“Smoke and mirrors,” Tau said. “You tried to substitute iron will and pure determination for hope. Then you turned the joy in fulfillment, the gratitude, into something ugly, into a monster.”
Bagheera is purring again. “You have done so well,” Ishmael says. I feel a half-hearted effort to turn aside his praise, but it is weak. He is right. I have done well.
“There is no confidence without hope,” the Star says. The Star. Her name, I know suddenly, is Raiden. “WIthout the strength to hope for something better, thre is no basis or even reason for confidence.” Raiden grows brighter, and trails of light fall from her as she moves.
I am so tired now I can barely stay upright. I lean against Darzee. “Sleep,” she says. “I’ll hold you till the morning, and everything will be better then.”
