“He who fears that he shall suffer is already suffering from what he fears.”

— Michele de Montaigne

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He woke up crawling toward a forest. It wasn’t that he was unaware of all that occurred before, it simply didn’t matter as much as the forest—at least not any more. It was only a matter of a body rocking itself toward a dark and quiet glade of trees, with darkness shrouding everything behind the scaly grey of the thin trunks stretching with a near-perfect ninety degree verticality from the ground.

The ground. Scrubby prairie grasses with wildflowers  scattered around the browns and greens  all around him and his knees and palms. The soil was gravel and dust with a pale red hue. Each and every pebble and ground stuck itself in the tender of his palms and the thin skin of his knees.

Pain doesn’t matter. Clothing doesn’t matter. A name doesn't matter. It is only the perfectly still darkness hiding behind the thin wall of slender and white and tufts of green looming overhead and swaying in the breeze.

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His name might as well be Steven, but we may change it to Lucas or Seraphim. Today, we will call him Jesus. Maybe John. Maybe Elias. It doesn’t matter to us, the trees, the gravely soil, and to him. Only the darkness by which he shall continue to crawl toward, with the hope of entering. Yes, Elias.

Behind him is a valley of water laying flat across the undulating pitches of rock and hill. Wind is blowing across this valley, with thin wisps of cloud streaking across the sky. No building in sight, no power lines or roads stretching over land and water. No path by which Elias has followed. Only this pristine silence of land and red and crimson and stone and juniper shrubs sitting atop of the crags.

We think he’s happy to crawl as we see him. Maybe it’s his infancy, maybe it’s “the joy set before him.” Either way, his face is open as his body lumbers over the small boulder to the left of him. It’s just him and these trees.

Honestly, we don’t know what’s inside the forest. We can’t guide him any better than we can guide any other with better ambulation and intention. We don’t know the why to any of it—only that we can see him and understand the world he experiences. We have our own world to experience and understand, but today, and tomorrow, and the thousands of other tomorrows to come, we have come to understand him. Maybe we will. Maybe he’ll stay our Elias for the next little while.

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I must enter into the city of the unknowable, for everything before and behind me is unknown. The unknown has to begin with this darkness before me. I don’t even want to look up and around. I don’t want to consider any other fucking issue or hunger or request I might feign import to; it’s this and only this darkness I must come to know.

I’ve buried the dead enough times to not care if I meet my own death at this point.

Should I tear my arms off if they try to stop me? Should I pluck my eyes out if they dart to the left or right? It doesn’t matter, the world doesn’t matter—not anymore. I just have to somehow bring myself to this silence I think is before me. I know it’s quiet in there. I know I will find whatever it is I am to find in there.

I don’t know if that’s true.

I know it is true.

At this point,

I will live and die as though it is true.

My name is John, or maybe Thom. Maybe it’s Edwin or Sarah. Today, it’s Sarah. Today, I am a dove. Well, yesterday I remember being a dove. Either way, today, I am something who must enter into something never before entered into. I have only known shadows and hell and desperation before this glade of trees before me. Today, I am Sarah, and I must lift my wings in the air that I might hide myself in the branches of this dark and quiet forest.

The foxes are looking for me. Jesus is looking for me too, but He’s not as ravenous as others. Death might be all around me, and I might have even fallen through it once before. I might have been eaten and swallowed whole by a dragon fifteen lifetimes ago. Today, I have only woken up with my face and body pointed forward, and I must move forward. Perhaps had I awoken to whatever is behind me, I would yearn for it as much as I do this forest. But I didn’t die facing that direction. I didn’t wake up facing that direction.

My wings feel like hands. My feathers seem to be wrapped over with denim and cotton. My talons have been clipped and pulled into chimeric shapes that have the roundness of smoothed over stones. Ridges and skin stretch over them. Skin stretches over all of me, with plucks of hair rising out of little punctures. My beak is tender now. It’s now red and pouted outwards. I can feel everything of the universe across the skin covering my mouth. Each flicker of wind. Each pulse of blood writhing through it. I feel all of it. It tastes of myself, though I couldn’t describe that taste to another.

I can’t fly. Not anymore. Something is wrong. Or at least I feel like something about this should be wrong. Maybe it’s not, but this feels nothing like flying. It feels like I’m tripping over everything. I don’t think I’ve ever tripped before, or spent this much time feeling the ground as I am. The rocks hurt my wings. The grass pierces my belly, and I don’t like it. I got to get out of here.

If I must keep moving like this, then maybe Sarah will be safe. Maybe she’ll be safe from the foxes. Whoever I am, I must find safety and get out of this open field.

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“Do you think I should go down?”

“What would you say if you did?”

“I don’t know, but he seems stuck.”

“Don’t you dare leave.”

“Maybe he’s just taking his time. Maybe it’s just part of his process.”

“He’s not flying like he used to, and I’m worried that we’ve made a mistake. He had no problem like this the last couple times we sent him through.”

“There aren’t any mistakes any more. It’s up to him to move and we are to only watch and learn this time around.”

“What if he doesn’t make it? What if he gives up again and we have to start over again?”

“Claire, I know you love him, but he must do this. He must see the world without our love getting in the way.”

“We can run this whole program out again and again, but all it will do is get in the way. We have to watch. Both of you must allow him to be whatever he is now.”

“Fater, it’s not Claire who loves him. You love him too. You and me and Claire. We love him.”

“This is why we must watch, invisibly and silently.”

“But what of his wings? Did we have to pull them down like that? Kaye, did you mean for him to look like this?”

“He couldn’t be a dove anymore. He couldn’t fly  away from them like last time.”

“Quiet, both of you. Claire, look, he’s almost there. His hands are in the shadow of the trees.”

“Elias, my dear boy, I love you with everything.”

“Claire, he can’t hear us anymore.”

“What of it, then? Just let me say it.”

“Sorry. Never mind. Let’s just watch him.”

…

“Fater, go ahead. Give the command.”

“Kaye, I can’t. Claire, will you?”

“Confirming entry of Elias into Void 3X7-Gabriel. Elias, my son, go in peace, and discover your new form.”

“Remember when he was comet? Remember when we would track his coming and going as he flung himself around us?”

“Remember when he was firefly?”

“Kaye, stop it. I can’t think like that.”

“Will we see him tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“What about tomorrow’s tomorrow?”

“Maybe we’ll see him for a thousand tomorrows in a thousand forms with a thousand names. Maybe we’ll love him as he is for the rest of our days.”

“So, tomorrow then. We’ll see him tomorrow.”

“Yes, but he’ll call us something else by then.”