Oblivion

Chapter 2

A lagoon of midnight blue knelt beneath a waterfall, praying to that trickling sound as birds sang twinkling hymns above. Women swam among the lilies, adrift in a sunken garden, bathing in their sweet perfume. One woman seemed to be singing, so softly the trees leaned in to hear it.

An old man stepped from the jungle, a small tea house crouching behind him in the leaves. He wore a simple, cream-colored kimono that fell to his bare feet and he held a musical instrument in his hand, the strings still reverberating some errant song.

"Hello Ama," he said when he saw us. "And you must be Elysia. I am called Wao."

His skin was deeply browned from the sun, his eyes crinkled with mirth and flecked through with wonder. His voice was almost a whisper. "May I make you some tea?"

White flowers bloomed from our cups as we drank. The air turned warm, our feet soft against the earth. Everything was lush and fragrant, spilling over with the kind of happiness that exists only when the summer is sweet and the day is new. "Every kind of medicine can be found in this garden if we know what needs to be healed," the old man said. "How are you feeling this beautiful morning?"

I thought for a moment. There was no pain in my body, no trouble in my mind. In fact, there was nothing so worrisome at all, unless that was the very sort of thing one should be worrying over.

"It is only that I can't remember a time before yesterday," I said at last. "As though I did not exist before then. And yet, I am quite certain that I did, and that I was in a very different place from here."

The old man nodded his head, plucking gem-colored things from the trees and putting them in my tea as we wandered. "That must certainly be true," he said. "We have read about you in our histories, we have even painted you in our art, but this is the first we have ever seen someone like you with our own eyes."

Confusion must have passed visibly across my face.

"Humans mingled long ago," Ama explained. "No race remains."

I looked at my pale freckled skin, their darker skin, and wondered once more whether I was not very lost indeed.

"Perhaps we could help you remember," the old man said, plucking leaves from a tree and adding them to my cup. 

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