Drinking the Autumn Elixirs

She opens her eyes slowly, welcoming in the scene around her. Many faces… many beings… living and dead…. All gazing back at her in a silent screaming passion. 

“Welcome to Autumn,’ she purrs, in a deep, dark and delicious voice. “The harvest is upon us. Today we celebrate the fruits of our labors.”

She raises a glass of the ruby-red liquid. The color changes slightly…scarlets and burgundies… as the warm dancing light from the candelabra refracts through the saffron hued crystal goblet in her slight but powerful hand. It is not wine in her glass. Wine is for those who wish to forget…. A foreboding luxury for which she has no further use. No. It is time now only to remember… the past and future alike. To remember what brought her here to this table of plenty. To remember the famines that befell and will befall. To remember this moment … for all its magical mundanity… here amongst the angels and demons, friends and lovers, beasts and creatures which witness and accompany her path. 

“To us!” She boldly exclaims. “May we revel in the long, darkness of winter ahead!” 

Guttural howls, wild cackles, life-wrenching screams and manic cheers erupt from the beings all around her. Intensely sucking the warm air through her teeth, she fills her lungs to the brim, allows her head to fall backward exposing the whole of neck and jawline and lets out a most indescribable sound. Perhaps akin to the primal cries of a woman in childbirth… but she is not exactly in childbirth…. She is birthing herself…. breaking open before their very eyes to reveal finally what has been gestating within. 

She is a raw and powerful thing… as are her most trusted companions. They walk many roads; sometimes they are long and hot, dry and exposed, rain soaked, thorn covered, ill-defined odysseys. Other times all is still. And the oasis they seek is in the sounds of their own breath… of their own feet moving across the body of the earth. Even when she seated, sleeping or otherwise engaged in the comings and going of life, she iswalking her path… and so are they. All of them. The raw and powerful things which share themselves with her. 

There are relics of the past, everywhere…. always, and they remind her of the ancient future. How primitive and wise we will have always been. How earnest in our obfuscation. How comically tragic that they tried anything at all with such convincingly weighted conviction. Next time, she remembers, they will more often roll around in the nothingness of it all… an act of true claircognizance that would completely turn the tide yet again. Next time, she remembers. And smiles knowingly to her den of accomplices. 

For now it is only time to relish in the full of their cups. This year’s harvest demanded great sacrifice from all of them and they had been brave in their offerings. Each of them had been changed, not only in her eyes which had been burned in last summer’s fires and still carry the scars of torn perception, but changed in their own right. Skins, robes, masks, shells and armor from past lives were strewn about the space, used now as precious props and padding to adorn the floor and furniture of their bacchanal. They had no further need now for what so recently they could not live without. And so it is… the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. 

She slowly, purposefully tears the soft flesh of the fig in two halves and gazes at the world inside it’s body. “Perfect”, she whispers. The sound of the escaped word is inaudible to even her over the jubilee. The beings are on their way to wherever the night’s journey will lead them and the den is filled with the sights, scents, sounds and sensations of secrets finally revealed, shared and savored. She brings the fig gently to her nose, and in pours its unmistakeable intoxication. It fills her completely with its will to live on and she cannot stop the proceeding taste, the bite, the gnaw, the swallow. They are one now, again and again and again. 

In the elegantly ordered chaos around her she becomes suddenly aware that she is being seen. She lowers the fruit from her lips, and piercingly scans the den… a predator, searching for another predator…. 

And there he is, indeed, eyes already locked on hers. He is leaned back comfortably on a pile of skins… his own skins… shed and collected from many years of birth and rebirth…. And he is smiling slyly. She puts the last of the fig in her mouth and savors it completely, all while reading the book of their eternity together in his face and in the space between them. She is not compelled to move towards him, nor he to her. They are already entwined, even from across the room. Both can clearly feel the life of the other- inside, outside and all around them. And it is then she has a memory…

It is a memory from tomorrow night, when the party is finished and the den is empty. Some would call it a ‘mess’ perhaps. Food and drink spilled here and there… overturned bedding and furniture, clothing and jewelry left behind without care. They are sitting in the middle of it all by the fire, just centimeters apart, quietly staring into the fertile void of each other’s eyes. They are seeing the future and the past. Again and again. And then they are laughing. 

She remembers this future memory and returns the smile to him from across the soiree. “Welcome to Autumn”, she mouths silently to him. “Thank you”, he mouths slowly, humbly… “for everything”.