Onion-layers

[Robert Crisman]

We came on, of all thing, a chalet such as one you might find in the Alps in a meadow, except that here what surrounded the place looked more like anthracite strip-mined than soft, lush green grass where Heidi might lie down in clover and dream her Walt Disney-like dreams.

No matter; we ducked inside to chew on the latest devil's bamboozle.

Inside was bare as a set long abandoned, except for a table on which sat a pot of tea steaming, another one of the devil's small giggles, letting us know that his colors still flew in the breezeway.

We passed on the tea--wouldn't you?--and went and stood at the window that looked on the ecological carnage, and got to threshing the last day's events, and what they all meant for the hard days upcoming.

It seemed that we had onion-layers of fear lodged within us, the first layer a product of ego congealed--I'd wanted to wear the world like a suit and parade in the mirror like all the invulnerable comic-book heroes--and while I battled through that and came out intact, the death of my world in replay, along with the thought of my mother's lost bones, had almost killed me and L'amea.

The others' fears differed a little from mine, theirs being more purely the product of rapine inflicted upon them in war, but nonetheless, we were one blood, hence shared the poisons, as when L'amea gasped, choked, and fell when my mother leered out from the grave, and so, all those layers--we'd come through the first and the second, and now, what shape might the next take, and who among us would it target?

[Angela]

That "wouldn't you?" was great.  This six makes me wonder what it would be like to have all fear understood and in control - all of it faced and faced down, and to not have to do it alone.  Wondrous.