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**in case you don't notice, this is an allegory.**
One day, not very long ago, although now retrospect makes it seem to have been ages, as retrospection is wont to do, I was taking a walk in the grassy fields of the meadow behind of the mere. I had had some rough days, and I was just starting to come out of them when I discovered that the person whom I had foolishly considered to be the light of my life, the sun blazing away my darkness, was actually only a 60-watt bulb of no cash value, or intrinsic for that matter. I had been straining my eyes in the dim light for miles and was ready to turn it off. It gave me a headache. So I turned it off, but I stubbed my toe in the dark and was required to turn it back on again. This time, I was aware of some lighted candles on the edges of my darkness, but as they shed no perceptible light, I took no note of them.
Well, anyway, just when I was wondering how on earth I was going to live with this half-light, because I was scared and hurt when I turned it off, it decided for me when it burned out. The candles notwithstanding, I was in complete darkness, but this time I was more... amenable to the lack of light. Don’t ask me why.
Anyway, I was walking in the meadow behind of the mere. I had worries. Everybody has worries. They’re little elongated froglike things, and they are the slimiest, coldest creatures; they wrap a tentacle around your ankle or leg and weigh you down. I attract worries like a tentacle-magnet. As I was walking, I kept getting more of the slimy things. You can’t just kick them off either, so I had to walk slower. It was irritating, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Until, that is, I slipped off into empty air because I wasn’t watching where I was going. As I fell, I reached out to everything, but rockholds crumbled, small plants uprooted, and people’s hands roughly let me go. I didn’t scream. I was too afraid, and besides, the echoes would have been too painful. That and I didn’t know how to go about screaming. Suddenly I saw an image before my eyes; the flickering face of a boy I had seen farther back, towards the beginning. I reached out, but it was only an image, and he disappeared.
During this time, I was banging against the sides of the chasm as well as in free-fall. I wanted to see that boy again. I don’t know why I was so intrigued by him. He just showed up, unexpectedly, like distant relatives do around Thanksgiving time. The only time I had ever seen him was far nearer the outset of my trek than I was now. I had seen him praying by the side of my road. I guess it was the manifestation of a random memory. Strange things often happen when one is behind of the mere. You know how every so often you remember something that you haven’t thought about in years? It was kind of like that. Only, I was fixated with finding him. I started grabbing at everything in sight, hoping to check my fall so I could go look for him. Suddenly I caught hold of something that was strong and firm. I looked over my shoulder to what lay below, because the whole time I was falling I was facing up. I saw horror, dread, and evil writhing their wormish, serpentine bodies into a tight knot. Bright flames of avarice licked hungrily upwards. Jealousy grew like a silent green moss on the rocks. Sloth left a trail of acidic slime that ate away at everything it touched.
I shuddered with revulsion, and was filled with gratitude for the hand that didn’t let go. I had song lyrics running through my head: "You rescued me / In the nick of time / I was right on the edge / of going out of my mind / I was running on empty / Down to a crawl / Just before I found out / What life without love would be... / You rescued me." Who rescued me? I looked up, but all I knew was his hand and his face, so those were clear, but the rest of his appearance was murky and shifting.
He just let me hang there for awhile, holding onto his hand. That was sort of... unusual. I was in a bemused sort of laconic, irritated state, hanging there while he took his sweet time deciding whether to pull me up. He asked me where we were and I gave a flippant answer, then compared myself to a famous carpenter. He pulled me up.
I noticed that he had something about him that made my worries untentacle themselves from my leg and slither away, because I could walk faster and with less effort. Suddenly the sun came out from behind the clouds in the sky, shining down on my current position, but around the road, behind me, and a ways in front of me were still shadowed. I saw flowers on the road, and more people. They were nice, coming I and out of the shadows like friendly wraiths, but I couldn’t stay and I couldn’t follow them. When one is walking in the meadow behind of the mere, the only path one can take is your own. There were hundreds of things by the side of the road that I had never seen before. Things that I had seen before were illuminated more brightly, so I could see more of them. It was fascinating.
Then I discovered that the light was shining from the boy. He had helped me back on my path, but of course he couldn’t walk on it himself, but just at that point his path had come out of the darkness and was running alongside my own. I waved, and he smiled. He was farther along on his path than I was on mine, because he had been walking for longer than I had.
Every so often we’d meet in the grassy separation between our two paths and stop to stand together and touch. We could hear other people around us still walking, the flowers were still growing, and everything else was going along its path but us. Then he’d say goodbye and jog a bit to reach where he was supposed to be, and I would do the same. We'd keep walking.
It’s a nice place, the meadow behind of the mere. I’ll have to walk there more often. But now I have to go before the mere. People will be wondering about me.
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