“How much of reality is hidden from us?”

  Paradoxical Question on a standing stone

  As day became night, shadows were lost in umbra, and it began to cloud over.

  The shower was just enough to cool them. Davy instinctively draped his arm around her shoulders.

  She leant into him. Her damp fur, warm against his side, gave off a musky stink. She turned; her gaze fixed on the standing stone beside them.

  The weight of the name ‘Rebecca’ that she now carried settled heavy on her.

  She traced the fur above her heart absently. She was unsure whether it was really her place to carry it but knew she’d already accepted it.

  It was more than a name now.

  She turned the Davy, “This is our mob’s place, it contains many pieces of the past. Our past.” As she spoke, her voice trembling.

  Even through the decoder he could feel the gravity of her words. He followed her gaze to the wall in front of them.

  At first, it was just rock, dark and unyielding.

  But then… motes, faintly glowing, began to appear leaving subtle ripples, that washed through the stone, across it like a shiver. They spread, leaving the surface writhing and reeling, like moving water.

  A pattern began to form, a spiral of green and blue light, intertwined and cast by motes. Davy recognised it as the Void Spiral from the standing stone.

  “You sure you’re not doing this?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she replied quietly while forming a triangle with her hands as if shading her eyes and then added, “Are you?”

  Davy laughed and looked at her. But she was serious, “Me? No!”

  Rebecca fell silent, eyes fixed on the shifting light. “How is he doing this? His connection is so strong. Too strong?”

  She held up the triangular gesture, this time directed at Davy. “All is connected; matter and void.”

  “What does this mean?” he mirrored her gesture.

  “It’s the Diri, a gesture of hope for balance and symmetry. Of ‘teget’.”

  “… and that all is connected.” He added playing back her words from earlier.

  “Yes.” She nodded and smiled before adding, “and that Matter and Void must have both balance and symmetry else there can be no harmony.”

  Before Davy could ask more, a single green mote emerged from the face of the Void Spiral, tracing an elliptical path.

  Anther motes emerged, blues and reds, then a torrent of red and blue light. They surged toward him in a cone, their radiant paths burning into the darkness. The wall, blindingly bright with their brilliance.

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  Somehow their passing left the wall in shadows of darkness.

  Davy watched, fascinated and crossed to the wall. Its rippling surface whispered to him, ancient and enigmatic, like the voices from similar desert stones at home.

  He gently touched the surface. It was cold, almost pliant, like the wall in his cave but the touch came with a sense of… depth.

  He pushed harder and as his finger disappeared a ripple spread out across the surface. Dark matter alive, pulsing with a purpose; giving it solidity.

  He remembered stories his mother used to scare him with, tales of shadowy places that swallowed men whole.

  He felt an unusual pull and stepped through the wall into a large cave, that opened out much like his own. Davy reached down and brushed his fingers across a glowing fragment, green, alive, that was embedded in the rocky floor near the entrance.

  It conveyed an essence, a purpose and delivered a surge of energy that washed through his mind like a current of deep dark water.

  He perceived this with new senses. Senses that resonated with the dark energy of the cave wall. It gave him an understanding of purpose that came as a whisper, “Balance must endure.”

  Motes spun around his fingers. Up his arm and then across his body, leaving brush strokes of energy on his skin like intricate tattoos. They just kept coming, forming a bright shroud.

  He became an all-consumed shadow of blackness covered in a veneer of motes, their light and energy adsorbed.

  Then a blinding burst of energy exploded out of his body. It lit up the cave, scattering motes all across it.

  Chaos consumed balance, shattering ... “everything”.

  Davy staggered and fell towards Rebecca; her movements in slow-time, her reactions immediate and reverent.

  Motes streamed back to him, a swirling churning mass of light.

  Time stuttered as Rebecca dropped to one knee. She bowed her head. Hands forming the Diri over her face in sluggish, deliberate movements.

  A low, keening sound escaped her lips, rhythmic and raw. It was almost a song, rising and falling. The choppy rhythm giving it staccato phrasing.

  Motes pulsed to the cadence of her voice and lit up the cave, shifting with her tone as though she were guiding them.

  Reality fractured.

  The cave, Rebecca, the pulsing motes; gone.

  In their place, a blinding golden sun burned his skin, the acrid sting of gunpowder filled his nose.

  A church loomed, the stockade trembling under the force of battle.

  This wasn’t a memory. This was happening.

  Again.

  Then that reality glitched and he caught the briefest glimpse of the stockade, broken and burning before being blindfolded.

  He waited, engulfed in silence.

  “?Apunten! ?Fuego!”

  The command rang out, sharp and final. A volley of gunfire followed the sound, deafening.

  He felt the bullets rip through his chest, each one a burst of searing pain. He staggered across converging timelines, clutching at his wounds.

  And for a moment, there was nothing.

  The heat, the gunpowder, it was all so vivid, too vivid.

  Was it memory or something else, hell if I know? Something pulling him back?

  Rebecca couldn’t move, trapped outside his time. She saw him slowly slump to the floor holding his chest.

  The motes pulsed brightly, a flash that made her turn away. When her vision returned, Davy was standing again but not for long.

  His thoughts seemed to resonate with the pulsing of the motes. Words formed in his mind, “there must be enduring balance.”

  The pulsing stopped…

  Then there was blinding sunlight in the cave, and the cold darkness gave way to searing heat. The air shifted, thick with smoke and the stench of war. Davy wasn’t in the cave, a stockade rose around him, its walls trembling with the roar of gunfire.

  He was firing quickly, making each shot count as the church was slowly being overrun. Someone handed him another rifle.

  The position was hopeless, all he could do was take as many of them with him as possible. He used that last shot to fire into the barrels of gunpowder stacked up in the corner.

  This time, although his body seemed to explode, it was contained within a cloak of pulsing motes. Each matching the drumming beat of Rebecca’s heart; sustained by her strength.

  The cadence and tone of her keening slowly fell away as she collapsed. The essence of the cave echoed with her sombre idiom.

  Time buckled and with-it Davy’s sight went sideways. He looked for Rebecca, but neither were anywhere to be seen.

  He was alone, the thought that neither Rebecca was present confused him.

  He sat on a rocky crag, overlooking the valley. It was quiet, save for the soft hum of a gentle breeze.

  Two stars, bright as judgement, burned above, each throwing long, distorted shadows over the landscape. A black moon hung between them, stark and ominous.

  Then the stillness broke and from the distance came a flock of four mechanical birds. Their red-painted wings glinting as they soared in perfect formation, movements precise, unnatural. Davy’s gut tightened with unease.

  One landed on each of the sloping sides of the valley, their talons digging into the rocky earth, while the other two descended to the riverbank.

  The birds hovered; their movements too smooth, too precise; more machine than creature.

  Then, with a sharp hiss, their beaks gaped open. One by one, figures dropped onto the valley floor. Red fur, sharp eyes, moving like they’d done this a hundred times before; the occasional brown mixed in.

  They were trained. Controlled.

  The whole field was laid out in front of him to see as bolts of blue light struck out at the reds and their Bird, all struck home but did nothing. They were either absorbed or bounced off.

  Just as abruptly as it began, everything shifted. The air thickened and the light dimmed as edges of the previous reality blurred into nothingness. Valleys, stars, birds; gone. Darkness came down hard, heavy and for a moment, the whole world went still.

  Quiet.

  Then, with a jolt, Davy found himself back in the cave; its jagged rock and stale air rushing in like a slap to the senses.

  The echo of Rebecca’s scream still clung to the rock, like the cave was holding its breath.