Solo The Sounds on the Ground

[Sentalia]

TIMESTAMP: 3 Summer 524 AV


Confused, heavy, sinking into an abyss: these were the feelings that hit Sentalia like a tidal wave as she fell from Leth's kingdom and first came to consciousness, if you can call it that. Spluttering and splashing for a few precious gasps of air, her initial experience of life in the mortal realms as an Ethaefal was one of desperation, as though her fall was but a minute transition between celestial exaltation and mortal perishing. All she could cognize in those first few moments were the cold, the dark, the wet, and the panic that seared every cell of her freshly materialized body. The woosh of wings overhead were the only signs of other life as she tried to process what was happening. Unprompted, the survival instinct suggested that such a sound was from flying creatures, that they eventually must tire of flying and take rest, and that they should therefore be moving in the direction of solid ground. This thought emerged in her mind in a fraction of a second as her whole being was rocked with electrifying, asphyxiating alarm. With great flurry of unskilled motion, she quickly made efforts to keep her head above water, but was afforded yet a few meager more breaths of air and one too many drops of seawater which raked against her throat before falling under the surface once more. Like a newborn calf just coming to terms with its embodied existence, she flurried her limbs about while flexing unfamiliar fingers and toes before panic-propelling herself towards the surface to prevent further intrusion of water into her organs of respiration. A cacophony of bird chatter accompanied by strange, distant cries and shrieks upon the backdrop of sighing trees drew her attention to the shore behind her. Pathetically, almost blindly, she flailed and flopped about with one too many mouthfuls of brine before finally flutter-kicking herself into forward movement, flicking her upper body into the air to take a breath whenever possible. Her motions became somewhat more coherent as she came to fuller consciousness of her body, and within a matter of a few minutes - or was it closer to an hour? She found herself collapsed and coughing upon the sand, wheezing and struggling to breathe properly, a soppy, soaked-through mess, totally at a loss as to who she might be, where she was finding herself, and with a profound, contradictory ache in her heart that longed for an unnamed and forgotten home where things made sense. For all she could tell, she was a pile of cold, wet, exposed flesh on alien shores, barely cognizant of the flickering of the rising sun peeking out upon the horizon. Hope is a paltry thing for a newly manifested creature in a strange land. Survival is the only currency, each full breath the only true wealth.

[Sentalia]

Gratitude is a strange thing... it can come out of an individual, it can be expressed in so many ways, it can be felt in the presence of life all around, if you're quiet and open enough. Not knowing where she came from, where she found herself, or the theme of what was occurring to her as a living being, Sentalia slowly came to her senses after her watery nighttime battle. Naked and cold on the beach, the first promising rays of joyous light streamed out from the sky, heralding the end of night's reign and the elucidation of one's basic bearings with self and surroundings. Gentle, easy, and carefree grunts and snuffles greeted her as her eyes opened for the first time on land; those precious first gifts of the morning sun slowly brought to form the patterns, colours, and textures of a picturesque beach scenario. The calm and almost kind-hearted sounds were coming from the beach pigs of Swine Swells upon the maw; they slowly and sleepily congregated around her as an unexpected but not unwelcome feature of the break-of-day beachscape they call home. Quiet, quaint, and alert to their deeply physical nature, these pigs exhibited a kind of lazy but not disinterested curiosity in the newcomer to their shores. The sound of plant-flesh being munched and crunched, the juices pushed out of the pith by the force of the swine's bite, their rhythmic mouth-smacking sounds enlivened her ears to their local presence. The accompanying chorus of easy, eager grunts and other simple pig-sounds was somehow comforting, as though their satisfaction in munching away on fallen fruits extended itself to her own body. Was there a difference? Were these constituent components of her own self, communicated to her bodily locus of experience by these strange yet sweet creatures? Or was she simply a destinationless observer in a natural setting of animal sensations with no clear narrative, no coherent theme to her existence?

These observations and reflections passed through Sentalia's mind over the course of a few minutes as the morning light grew more bold with the sky's expanse. Her presence as a living being in her own embodied reality began to dawn on her, metaphorically appropriate with the time of day, yet ungrounded in any understandable origin. To be a stranger in a new world that is paradoxically familiar, to be awake to living sensations but mute to their meanings was how Sentalia, Ethaefal of Leth, entered Mizahar for the very first time. She was tender and fresh, and quickly subjected to the inspection of the casual and curious beach pigs as they made their way across the sand. Their snuffling snouts touched her legs, her arms, her scalp: the sensation was neither fully that of a caress nor a proper probing, but somewhere fleshily in-between. Thusly, the first feeling Sentalia felt for other life on land was one of unbothered affection, though she had not yet come to the words to express this serendipitous appreciation.

"Who am I? What is going on?" and "thank you" could have been her first spoken words in her new form, had the pigs also been conversationalists. The connection between them, like clear light upon running water, was simple, uncomplicated, and just plainly there, yet profoundly welcoming in a manner that was graceful and mute.

The next terrestrial quality that exposed itself to her in all her freshly fallen rawness were the juices of guava and mango on the slick bristles of swiney snouts, which dropped gently on her unrobed skin and stuck to her like sweet little invitations to a beginner's breakfast. While the small splatters could be wiped away without problem, the intensity of this virginal touch overwhelmed her capacity to respond, and she remained motionless upon the sand, feet tickled by now benevolent waters, immersed in the sharp sugariness of fruity aromas.
What lay ahead for her was totally unknown as the cool morning breeze sighed through the trees, like the whispers of countless ancient secrets. The organic intelligence of rainforest vegetation rustled in the serene embrace of this gentle wind that humbly fondled flower and leaf alike. Despite the looming presence of deep uncertainty, the auspices of her fall from the heavenly moonlight abode could only be described as compassionate. Her body and mind came alive to her between the uninterested inspections of her piggy midwives. She was motionless, and tentatively, tenderly allowing the life around her to bring her to involvement with it.

In this way, without complication, a dynamic interplay between mortal forces and the nuanced depths of inner contemplation, Sentalia entered her new phase of being in Mizahar.

[Sentalia]

The gnawing in her stomach continued to grow as the day grew longer. She could clearly tell that her body wanted something that it did not currently have close to it; these were her thoughts as she came to the realization that the pigs were satiating the gnawing sensation in them by searching for fruits and whatever else they could eat. It was as though Sentalia's mind was trying to describe what was occurring to her body in real time. Probably would have been easier with an interlocutor, though at this moment she remained alone. Sentalia quickly saw that the fruits were coming not from the waters, but from the trees, where a subdued symphony of rustling leaves and squeaks and squawcks pressed outward toward her from the foliage. Hungry, hungry - her stomach growled at her for something to take the place of hunger. She began to feel that it would be a matter of time before the hunger would consume her entirely. She felt relatively balanced during her first sunrise on Mizahar, despite the intensity of the ocean birth, but now clearly recognized that she was on a limited budget of energy to keep her body moving and her mind alert. A smaller pig was rubbing its side enthusiastically against some small brushwood and was grunting with the gratitude of relief from something bothersome. Sentalia decided to come closer to this pig to see what exactly was going on, and soon took her hands to scratch the other side of the little pig's back... it leaned into her affectionate hand motions with even more satisfied grunts of simple animalistic contentment, and soon she had a small posse of hogs all waiting to have their turn. They certainly seemed happy to her, and it brightened her mood as well. For a little while, her hunger remained on the periphery of her awareness, and she was taking simple joy in being present with other forms of life on an easy-breeze day. After losing track of time with the pigs, her hunger began to return, and the very first little pig she saw dropped a big papaya fruit at her feet, almost in gratitude, its eyes looking at her with tentative fear and hope at once, as if they were saying "thank you for helping us to feel better, here is something we can share together". The pig ripped a chunk of papaya from the whole fruit and began to jaw-clobber its sweet flesh with gusto. Sentalia was able to get a few mouthfuls before the rest of the hogs became too insistent. As their impromptu fruit feast came to a close, she noticed that the sun was higher in the sky, it was getting hotter, and the cool shade of the trees seemed more inviting than ever before. She hadn't seen a pig come or go from there yet... and as if on cue, right upon noticing that thought, she heard the most horrible squealing of pain and terror come from close by in the brush. The hogs around her departed with extreme haste and anxiety the second the wailing began. She sat still for a moment, drew closer, and then observed a medium-sized pig, a few trees into the jungle, covered by a giant snake which was consuming it whole. It was wrapping around the poor thing, becoming tighter and more insistent on killing its meal; Sentalia did not know what to do in that moment, as she was caught between sorrow for the pig's life and wonderment at the majesty of the serpent, its undeniable strength and chthonic power... Paradoxically, the snake also seemed very gentle in some sense. It was not easy to have all these feelings occur at once! Physically, Sentalia remained still, enjoying the outer edges of the shade that the trees provided, like a statue in the middle of a reverie... She would have to learn to think and act with fluent consistency, and soon, unless her intention was to become someone else's lunch.