S3E9: Lonely Gods

Sapphire wanders into Ntia, where she has been remembered as a male river god, and speaks with some of the people who live there. 

Features Sophie Doss as Sapphire, Daniel Rojas as Shedalai, Cindy Verzwyvelt as Nyra, and Timmy Vilgiate, Nicholas Kline, Cindy Verzwyvelt, and Sophie Doss as crowd members. 

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Sound effects from freesound.org: "15" by adcbicycle, "Cat, Screaming, A" by InspectorJ, "Crate Break 4" by kevinkace, "Old Metal Wheelbarrow" by andersmmg, "mud_1" by lzmraul, "wet slop plop" by eneasz, "kicking a wheelbarrow... (four sounds from series) by jorickhoofd, "wet soggy squishy footsteps" by bewagne, "squelching footsteps" by Adielees9, "Flies on shit 2" by Te TeNoise, "water falling from stainless steel dam" by klankbeeld, "Water Explosion" by Sheyvan, "Ambience, Rain, Heavy..." by InspectorJ, "footsteps on wood foley" by martian, "Footsteps running away" by Rudmer Rotteveel, "Lake at night 1" by radam04, "Waterfall off a dam at Hitchens Pond" by evanfinkle, "Hydrophone drain sink metal kitchen suck" by Javier Zumer, "Draining sink recorded with hydrophones" by kev_durr, "Night by the beach" by caquet, "group_shocked8" by thanvannispen, "Shocked gasp" by GentlemanWalrus, "anger" by JuanFG, "I'll kick you so hard" by Airborne80, "murmur on ferry 3" by ivolipa, "35-Intrigue Murmur" by Leoctiurs, "Large crowd medium distance" by eguobyte, "Indoor adult murmur, couple" by SpliceSound, "rowing" by hazure, "Splashing Water by Oars" by Lubini, and previously used hydrophone sounds from S3E5.

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S3E8: Constellations

Dedjerba and John share a pot of tea, and discuss their travels while Sapphire heads out to see the city. John continues to try to figure out the nature of the alternate reality they are trapped in.

Featuring Michael Merriam as Dedjerba, Timmy Vilgiate as John, and Sophie Doss as Sapphire. Music provided by priest and strings ("H(n)A(o)T(t)E, W(n)A(o)N(t)T") and Soapstone Tpcastt ("The Miner's Ballad.") in addition to Hollow Sky by Timmy Vilgiate.

Sound effects provided by freesound.org, including "clothes rustling by tats14, "taking off and putting on shoes" by leonelmail, "wooden door" by vero marengere, "pouring tea into a cup in morocco" by florianreichelt, "pouring a cup of tea" by nebulous flynn", "logs being thrown into basket" by prabaker60, "matchstrike01" by kingsrow, "pan pot wok metal glass dish lift cupboard" by spanrucker, "aachen burning fireplace crackling fire sounds" by visionear, "bag 02" by detamine, "squeaky cabinet" by bormane, "filling teapot" by landub, "sipping tea" by indiana parkwars, "slurping" by nomfundo-k, "night party crowd singing in braulage", "footsteps on wood" by mydo1,  and"footsteps shoes hollow wood platform" by kyles.

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S3E7: The Journey to Ntia

John and Sapphire journey along the river Ia with their new friend Dedjerba, arriving at the city Ntia.
Timmy Vilgiate played the part of John, Eurycleo, and several miscellaneous sailors and crowd members, Michael Merriam played the part of Dedjerba, Sophia Doss played the part of Sapphire, and Nicholas Kline played the part of Telemakso.
Rivers of the Mind is written, produced, and scored by Timmy Vilgiate. Sound effects were provided by Freesound.org, including "a little bit drunk" by carmsie, "crowd cheering" by soundsexciting, "crowd cheer 2" by adam n, "water dam on teterev river" by gerainsan, "italy venice square day amb with live music" by yoh, "noises and music in the alleys of venice" by michel, "lakesup-park-summerafternoorfrontlr" by mitchell sounds, "gentle creek in rainforest with cicadas" by flood mix, "waterfall" by straget, "footsteps on a dock" by mmaruska, "footsteps wood 01" by anthousai, "footsteps shoes hollow wood platform" by kyles, "footsteps on wood" by mydo1, "Moored sailboat interior in strong breeze." by August Sandberg, "strumming sounds" by gobby 12, "tie the boat" by laurent, and "plastic creek 01" by dheming.

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J: The first night that I discovered I could read minds, the first night I realized that I would never come down from this trip, I felt as though I was floating in a massive river, drifting with the current, letting it push me along. Trusting it. For a moment it was a peaceful, zenlike thought to which I latched onto; it quieted my anxious mind for a few days. But now I looked out over the side of the boat at the churning blue water underneath the hull and instead of serenity the thought of the river filled my heart and mind with fear, knowledge of the uncertainty of trusting the course of the water, of the fragility of the boat we traveled in, of the loneliness of our passage.

        The river narrowed to a canyon shortly after we boarded the ship, one with high walls streaked with blue veins. Metamorphic rock, most of it, with  igneous rock that grew more abundant the higher you got. On the tops of the canyon walls, rows of strange looking trees glistened in the light of that seemed angelic, unreal to us from down in the shadow of the canyon’s walls. Enchanted by the sight, I looked up to the sky, hoping to avoid looking at the river. But the sky above our heads became a river instead, the trees and their leaves eddies lashing at the shoreline. The sound of the immense roaring filled my heart with dread—a waterfall off in the distance. I could hear Dedjerba think of it, for a moment—I shut my eyes. I strained to shut myself out from the minds around me. Inevitably, I still heard their sounds, their colors; I felt the contours of their movements and meanderings bending around me, but I did not want to let them in, or listen to them. Struggling against that was little use. My telepathy didn’t have a very clear off button, just a sort of “volume” knob that never really went all the way to zero. Sapphire leaned against the railing next to me. Not quite talking. Thinking about the bird—I couldn’t help but hear her. I wanted to comfort her but didn’t know what to say yet.

“There’s a waterfall coming, isn’t there?”, I said, turning to Dedjerba as he passed behind me. His heart grew grim but his chest puffed up with a near-suicidal bravado.
Ded: “Aye, but nothing that I haven’t seen before. Far, far to the south there are waterfalls so great you cannot see the sky behind them—an entire city could drift into its depths and you would not so much as notice the sound, much less the sight, so wide and tall they are. And layered atop one another, nonetheless. Seven days it took for us to pass them.”,
J: he boasted, though he feared as he made such claims that I would have traveled to the South, and that I would know that the supposedly great waterfall was not half as high as he made it sound. Dedjerba hadn’t seen half the things he’d expected to see at the edge of the world—just a blank white page streaked with lines of deep blue, surrounded by a slowly receding darkness. Knowing his secret, whenever I needed to tell him a story about my exploration, I would only draw from the things he had expected to see there. “It reminds me of the cataracts of the Sheba River; they pour from the mountains of Nuur at a place where the land splits apart and buckles over itself—in the caves alongside this great rockwall, there live people who fly along ropes and bathe themselves nude in the glorious downpour of the river.” Dedjerba hoped that if he met strange and foreign people some day in his exploits, they would bathe nude beneath a waterfall and swing from ropes—it was wishful, oddly specific thinking. Smirking with envy, he leaned up against the railing next to me.
Ded: “Many wondrous things there are to see in this world.”
John: “Surely. But one I haven’t heard you speak of.”
Ded: “Oh?”
John: “Ntia. Your city. From others lips, yes, I’ve heard its name, but never truly glimpsed its wonders.”
Ded: “I am sure word of its greatness has spread”
John: He said, though he remained actually quite surprised that anyone had heard of Ntia, let alone spoken of its supposed wonders. He wondered for a moment if I would be as disappointed with his city as he was with the many “legendary” cities he had visited. Mindful of what it felt like me to be an explorer expected to bring back magnificent stories to my home city, Dedjerba continued,
Ded: “It truly is a sight to behold. A city interwoven with the river Ia, a city built on peace and love.”
Sph: “Peace and love?”
Ded: “A long time ago, Ia rose up above the houses of the ancestors. He drowned their cities for they were wicked, they had grown hateful and violent. He did away with their old languages and ushered in new and different words so that the people would need to learn to understand one another, to build a new city of peace and love, and so was built my Ntia. Fair, beautiful, free; as a waterlily blooming in the light of dawn, her rooftops glisten with the colors of fresh amber; forever set in her dance with the great river Ia, powered by his ceaseless motion that presses up against the great levybreaks and turns the waterwheels of her factories.”
John: he sighed, looking off romantically, if forlorn, before turning his ear down river, cupping it with his hand.

Ded: “The falls are near. Come. We will go ashore and lower the boat down. From there, it is a smooth trip to Ntia.” (he walks away)
Sph: “How long were we asleep...?”
John:  “Long enough for you to become a male river god in a newly industrializing society.”
Sph: “But short enough that I still feel tired, eh? (Drawing out each word) That’s just great.”
John: “I guess your gambit paid off, though, at least.”
Sapphire: “Maybe. I hope you’re right. It wasn’t really my idea though. It was the...
(Bird)
“The bird.”
(Bird)
“There it goes again...Do you know what it’s saying?”
(Bird)
John: “I can hear it, but it doesn’t think words very often. Just pictures.”
(Bird)
Sapphire: “What do you think it’s trying to say?”
(Bird)
John: “I don’t know. Something to do with trees.”
(Bird)
“Or maybe not.”
(Bird)
Sapphire: “It was doing this the other night, too.”
John: “I think it just likes hearing your voice.”
Sapphire: “Is that it? You need some attention?”
(Bird)
Eurycleo: “Hey friends, we are getting ready to lower the ship.”
John: “Right, uh, we’ll be right there. Come on.”
Sapphire: “Alright. (Sighs) Let’s go birdy.”
Eurycleo: “Can you toss me that rope?”
Milozie: “Aye sir.” (Bird starts freaking the heck out)
Sapphire: “What’s wrong? Calm down!” (Bird continues freaking out. Sapphire starts having a panic attack) “We’ve got to get off the boat.”
Eurycleo: “Here, I’ll help you...don’t fall over.”
Sapphire: “Uh, th..thanks…” (Bird)
John: “Sapphire, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Sapphire: (She cannot hear John) “What’s happening to me?” (Bird) “Am I going crazy?” (Bird) “Are you doing this?”
John: (They have reached the base of the falls) “Sapphire, are you okay?”
Sapphire: (Nervous laughter) “Yeah. I guess we made it already, huh?”
John: “Uh, yeah. We did.”
Sapphire: “Yeah, cool. It’s pretty out here.” (Bird) “The bird thinks so too. (Breaths) The water looks like...like glass.”
John: “The lights are going down.”
Sapphire: “The bird got pretty freaked out back there.”
John: “I picked up on that.”
Sapphire: “I didn’t...do anything crazy, did I?”
John: “No, you just, didn’t answer anyone, so I had to...make up something.”
Sapphire: “What’d you make up?”
John: “I told them it’s part of our religion for women not to speak while going down waterfalls.”
Sapphire: “Alright then. If it works, it works. (Beat) He said it was a city built on peace and love. I can’t wait to see what it looks like.”
John: “Me neither.”
Sapphire: “Can’t you see it, you know, in his mind?”
John: “It’s blurry. But we should be there any minute now.”
Sapphire: “Cool.” (Bird) “Yeah?” (Bird) “Really?” (Bird) “Well, don’t get any ideas.” (Bird)


John: The sunlight all around us turned a solemn and brilliant orange, and the water turned to a dark, almost black purple, we saw the rooves of houses—all neat, wooden triangular houses facing in different directions. Many different houses, all different sizes, silhouetted by the light...As we grew closer to the city, the shingles in the rooves gained a sense of form—all amber just like he said, their shingles were shaped like rose petals. As night fell, men and women emerged from their houses to light lanterns that cast a warm and homely light out onto the water for miles—they paddled the streets in their gondolas, laughing and singing and breaking bread. I could just barely hear the sound over the noise of the river softly pushing us along, but it filled my heart with hope. The closer we grew, the more details popped out to me—the round wooden windows above the rectangular doors—the porches and docks on which people shared conversations with friends—the flags and banners waving overhead—the small exposed island from which a complex for the harbor had been built—the ships arriving in the harbor to bring food, oil, metals, woods, and fibers from cities that must exist closer to the lake’s edge, next to towering warehouses built clumsily onto the lonely hillside. Networks of catwalks connected shops in what looked like a bustling downtown—a few larger buildings on stilts in the foreground appeared to be factories.
S: “It’s fucking beautiful man!”,
J: “I know, all of this is beautiful. You know, you’re a pretty good person to get trapped in a hexateron with.”
S: “You too, John. I wonder if they’ve discovered grass yet, or anything like that here.”
J: “Grass? You mean like...oh. Grass. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

JOHN: (Sapphire reads the first sentence too, and they crossfade) Dedjerba descended from his perch at the top of the ship and came up beside us,
Ded: “My good friends, we have arrived! I trust you will find our fair city to your liking. If I may, I would most certainly welcome you to board with me.”
J: He assumed the mantle of helmsman, letting he who had served as helmsman go below deck to rest his hands a little bit. We reached the port, welcomed by a gleeful and ecstatic crowd. The ship knocked against the pier and two men hopped out to tether it to posts.
Sai1: “There’s quite the crowd, Captain!”
Sai2: “I’m sure they’re all anxious to hear of what you’ve found!”

John: Dedjerba crossed his arms, with a melancholy look in his eyes that seemed to others who looked at him like a triumphant confidence--behind the shadow of his furrowed brow, he brooded and stroked his magnificent beard. Above all other things on his mind, he was really concerned with whether or not he had it in him to give a rousing enough speech for the crowd to carry him all the way home, or if they’d only make it halfway, and, in so doing, leave him at the tavern, from where he’d have to walk the entire way home. That happened when he went to the Forests of Tur-Ang-Sheul-Beth. He didn’t want to walk, though, either way—home was a long way from the harbor. He’d also hate for them to carry him home in celebration and leave his guests stranded at the harbor too—after the voyage to the Legendary Crystal Caves of Burhaal, he’d felt bad enough that they’d left behind a sailor who’d done a perfectly fair share of the work. But the crew on deck probably wanted to get drunk anyhow—they were all young, and neophytes to the whole exploration game. He also reckoned that the crowd also probably didn’t know the addresses of the other sailors so well as they knew his from his numerous celebrated journeys to afar. They’d have to give directions, which is a difficult thing to do when being carried by a crowd of cheering admirers. Beyond the logistics of getting carried home, Dedjerba felt a second weight press on him, one that I couldn’t quite understand well enough to express yet—something to do with the crowd, reading its tastes and predicting what kinds of stories the crowd would best like to hear, relevant to the stories he most wanted to tell, stories that sat in a set of thirteen sealed wooden chests in the ships cargo hold.

Eventually, he climbed up onto the highest point of the boat, pulling Sapphire and I up with him.
Sapphire: (whisper) John, look
John: What?
Sapphire: That’s the dam.
J: I saw it looming in the distance, lit up by the lights of the city—I saw its huge waterwheels with their churning canals. The look on Sapphire’s face was the kind of look that would lead up to something between a shrug and a sigh, but she didn’t move or make a sound. She just looked at the dam. Watched its wheels turning. Watched the water pour through them. Dedjerba rose his hands before the crowd—hundreds if not thousands had gathered beside the harbor to hear him speak.

Ded: “Oh my dear people of Ntia! How I have longed to come home to you! To see again this city unlike any city on this earth, this sparkling jewel in the River God’s crown! To tell you of the wonders which I have seen in my travels to far off lands, the likes of which cannot be imagined. Places where men walk on stilts and balance tea cups on their noses; where Spirit Birds with magnificent songs and soar through the skies with spectacular wings, belching fire and aether; where queer dwarves scurry about in castles made of gemstones; lands where there are mountains made of glass, other mountains made of fire; deserts in which there live warrior women who walk on their hands and carry their baskets on the tops of their feet; lands where the people speak in whistles; where flowers of unseen colors bloom beneath the light of dancing suns. And yet after all I have seen, nothing compares to seeing this city again. To see the love on your faces, the peace in your hearts. Please cherish this peace. Do not let yourselves falter.

        There are not only beautiful things I have seen at the edge of the world, but terrible things also. Famines caused by greedy kings; droughts that have turned entire forests to cinders and ashes; wars that have turned brother against brother, sister against sister, hisster against hisster, herther against herther, husband against wives, wives against husbands, liaisons against clients, and clients against liaisons. And having seen the dreadful things that go on there at the edges of the world, I must tell you that this peace here in Ntia is more precious than any of the foreign riches I have brought you, more valuable than any of the colonies that we will soon attend to from afar, more sacred than all of the fish and rice and gold in this river. Peace, as the great Nti himself once said, being not order, but freedom. May our lanterns all run out of oil, our hearths all run out of firewood, our warehouses run out of grain before we let the soul of our great city go the way of the despotic kingdoms I have known in foreign lands, before we let the words peace and love ever be worn away from our hearts.

        We have certainly brought back splendid bounty to share with you all in peace and in love. We bring, from the foreign lands, seeds and leaves of plants that the foreigner smokes in a pipe through his nose to produce a state like drunkenness...”
       
S: “They’ve got grass here John.”
J: “Sounds like it, huh?”
S: “We’re gonna get high in a city in another fucking dimension.”
J: The appeal was lost on me. I had been high on acid for about a thousand years or something.

Ded: ...”Fruits and vegetables with peculiar flavors and aromas; yards upon yards of silk; gold, silver, iron, steel, zinc, quartz, micah, doldum powders, unthings, and voidstuffs”...

S: “The fuck is a voidstuff?”
J: “It’s like a specialized type of unthing.”
S: “Oh, thanks for answering my question. Really clears it up.”
J: “It’s what forms at the edges of this universe as it starts to fall apart. That’s my best guess from what he pictures when he says it.”

Ded:...“and even two fellow explorers from a far away kingdom, who have seen things just as wondrous as I! They traveled to the Nuur mountains, where oxen with huge feathered wings and tails of scorpions stampede across radiant open valleys; where kingdoms of dwarf-men who speak peculiar tongues partake in strange orgies around towering bonfires, where the flowers glow in the night so that the fields look like far away cities. Their whole expedition unfortunately met their deaths while trekking through a dreaded place called the fire swamp. Perhaps you would like to here from them as well! (Crowd cheers, some folks say “Tell us about the orgies!”)”

John: Dedjerba motioned for me to speak. I cleared my throat and moved forward. So many people. Seeing so many of them all waiting for me to tell them of my adventures, hearing all of their thoughts coming in at once, comprehending at the same time all of their faces paralyzed all of my senses. “Greetings, people of Ntia. Nice to see all of you. I have heard of your city from afar, many marvelous things, but none were so great as what you all...seeing you all...this...(chokes) Sorry. I caught something in my...throat. I am called John. This is my navigator, Sapphire. We are both from the kingdom of...of...California!” A hush fell over the crowd. Dedjerba raised his eyebrows, stunned. California, they all thought at once in different words, was one of the fifty mystical domains in the heavenly sphere where all of the spirits of the ancestors lived. Perhaps the name was a coincidence, but a strange coincidence it was. California was home to the God of Quartz—perhaps we were his emissaries. Just then it hit me. This place had once been the real world—the world that I remembered—the names of the states must have been passed down through generations. Engrained into the religion. My heart sank as I realized that, in all likelihood, the people and places we once knew were long gone--that in killing Ryan, we had altered the fabric of reality itself. “Were it not for the generous and heroic assistance of Dedjerba, perhaps myself and my navigator would have perished trying to reach this place. And so we will be eternally grateful for his assistance, and hope you will be so kind as to let us stay here as we rest and recover for our return home.”

        Dedjerba, relieved that I had cut my speech short and not taken the opportunity to expound upon the wonders of the foreign lands, climbed down from on top of the ships cabin, and dove into the arms of the adoring crowd. He motioned subtly for us to join him, and we too lept into their arms, carried over boardwalks, alongside canals, up stairways, to a tall wooden house.

S3E6: 1000 Years of Sleep

Sapphire and John rest beside the river Ia, still unsure of the real nature of the world in which they are stranded.

NOTE: The show contains material that may be disturbing or triggering to some people.

Timmy Vilgiate played the parts of John and Eurycleo, Sophie Doss played the part of Sapphire, Nicholas Kline played the part of Telemakso, and Michael Merriam played the part of Dedjerba. The show was written, produced, and scored by Timmy Vilgiate.

Sound effects were provided by freesound.org, including "highflow river" by Cagan Celik, "think funny" by shawshank 73, bris-015 by Andre Desartistes, "r21-33 man sobs" by Craig Smith, "woman screaming yelling..." by bulbastre, "footsteps squeeky wood" by tmkappelt, "kocking door and open door" by rivernile7,
"1-getting-dressed" by 16gjuroval, and "foley footsteps desert boots sand" by pan14."

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J: There were no stars there in the sunless sky above our heads. No birds soared by, no clouds blew past us, no moon stared down on our weary bodies. There were no voices or city lights for miles. Only the sound of our imagined breathing, set against the flickering of the blue flames at distant edges of the night sky, and the sound of that breathing mingling with the sounds of the river. The water moved along with perfectly spaced ripples that looked like rooves of houses silhouetted by headlights, gliding on by us like set pieces on perfectly aligned metal tracks.
S: “Man, I shouldn’t have killed that bird.”
J: “What do you mean?”
S: “It all started when I killed that bird. Now it’s inside me. It’s like a…like a monster. Like a fucking demon. That’s what it fucking is. I’m cursed.”
J: Sapphire picked up a rock and hurled it into the river. “Cursed?”
S: “I’ve got a fucking demon bird inside of me. It’s…it’s in my fucking ribcage now. Just…just sitting there, where my heart should be. It’s a fucking monster. I…I want it out of me. I want it out.”
J: “I’ve felt the same way before.”
Sapphire: (Incredulously) “Yeah?”
John: Right…right before I went unconscious…the last thing I remember as a…as a real person with a real body…I had someone in my head. Mick. At the time, he seemed like this complete monster but I...at the same time, maybe it was just that I just couldn’t understand him. It was like he was everything I was afraid of being, everything I feared that I was, back before I left. I thought I could…I could fix him, I guess, if I pulled him into my mind. But when he was in there, it just felt wrong. Especially now that I think about it. It feels like just letting him into my head was a mistake by itself. And when I tried to pull back into my body, some part of him forced me out. I wasn’t in my body too much longer before…well. Ryan came along. And then having him in my head, same thing almost, but worse. A monster in my head. But not just a monster, it felt like. Sometimes a friend—sometimes I even looked up to him. Now it just feels like…I don’t know if it is…but it feels like the same thing as you.”
S: ”I guess I felt that way about my dad, actually.”
J: “Yeah?”
S: “Sometimes. I... haven’t ever told anyone about it. He’s why I left home, all those years ago. (sighs) When I was born, he was in Germany, and my mom was back home in San Diego. My first memory of him was…was waiting with Grandpa for him to come home. And I was so excited I could barely breath. He was like…this totally mysterious, heroic figure that my mom had shown me pictures of and told me stories about. I remember him coming in through the door, and sitting down across from me, and handing me a stuffed bear. And he seemed…good. But I could see in his eyes that he was…wasn’t just happy to see me…he was happy...but behind the happiness he was sad—or scared. Something. I couldn’t tell then. I just remember something was…was wrong. And for the first time, I knew in my own three year old way that he was a real human. If that makes any sense.

I remember the first few days with him back were peaceful, peaceful enough to cement that impression of my dad as this sort of sweet heroic man handing me a teddy bear, but one day—and it’s a day I remember clearly—we were getting dressed for Shabbat and I saw my mom bleeding from her nose. I didn’t know why she was bleed until later that night I heard them fighting. The first time I’d heard people yelling like that. I went out to the top of the stairs to peek out my head and…I saw my dad. He was red in the face, and my mom…was… (gulps) I’d never been so scared in my life. And it got worse from there. He was a fucking monster sometimes. But I—I swear to God, though, even after I ran away I could never make myself hate him, I never stopped worrying that something was gonna happen to him while I was gone. I still remembered, in the back of my mind, that stuffed bear, that afternoon waiting for him to come home. I know what he could have seen over there. I know it did something to him, I know that deep down he probably wasn’t prepared to see what he’d seen.

It seemed like he felt guilty about something. But he never talked about why. I’d heard him crying in his room some nights, but he’d never talk about it. Real men don’t cry in front of their daughters, I guess, was his idea. Maybe he killed someone, or maybe he watched someone die—whatever it was, there was some sort of ghost, haunting him. Maybe that’s what the bird is—it’s the same ghost that he had inside of himself—the same ghost that made my dad wanna hurt me made me incite a riot in a city. I don’t wanna think that we have anything in common. I don’t wanna think that cause we can’t. My whole life I’ve just tried to be the opposite of everything he was, you know? A free spirit. Peaceful. Loving…I’m sorry. (chuckles weakly) I should stop being such a downer.”
J: “No, no. You’re fine. I’m…I’m sorry that you’re…that you’re carrying this around. All of this pain from your dad. I can…I can only imagine…”
S: “You’ve probably known since the moment you met me.”
J: “Yeah. But thanks for telling me. And... I guess I know how you feel with the bird. Like, I know what it feels like to kill something too.”
S: “Yeah?”
J: “You know what he kept trying to make me do? Ryan, I mean.”
S: “What?”
J: “He kept taking me back to North Dakota. To my office. Right before I left. He’d ask me,
Ryan: “You ever wonder what it would feel like if you stopped running? If you took the fight to them, like you did, the night before you left
J: After a few hundred goes at it, I told him that…that I’d dreamed about it before. And he asked me about the dream. Eventually, I told him. And he’d say, every time,
Ryan: But you wanted to do it, somewhere deep down, didn’t you?
J: No, I kept saying. He kept doing it. He kept on asking me, again and again and again. And I kept saying no. After a lot of…of back and forth… I guess he got bored, so instead of just rewinding, he killed me. Each time it was worse. He could make it happen as slow as he wanted. He could do it anyway he wanted. And…and dying all those times…it split me up…I know that sounds weird…but every time he killed me, there’d be another copy of me somewhere who he didn’t kill.

And he didn’t let me forget any of it, he didn’t close me off to anything. I stayed aware of every single…every single reality where he was asking me those goddamn questions, dying and restarting and suffering in a million different places all at once. Until eventually I said…until I said I’d do it. And then…then he handed me the gun. And every time he handed me the gun, I felt this tiny bit of relief—in at least one part of my mind I was no longer hurting. The pain was too much. I couldn’t help myself—bit by bit, I took the gun from him, until I felt myself come back together. He didn’t have to tell me anything else. He didn’t have to say anything, he just had to get out of the way. He’d taught me how good it felt to hold the gun, to kill people, and…when I realized that I’d…I’d given in, I—I felt corrupted. I felt like it didn’t matter if I killed someone again.

So I kept killing. Any time I had second thoughts, he just needed to give me a small taste of what he could do to me, and so…eventually, I just killed, killed without thinking, without feeling. I killed entire cities, entire planets. Sure, there were other parts of me. Parts of me that resisted, parts of me that overcame him; there are parts of me that met you, that killed him instead; other parts that remember that are better than I feel like I can ever really be, but I still feel like the killer he made me into is still inside of me, somewhere, and it’s terrifying. Back by the river, when the prophet was in the column of water, I was terrified to connect with his mind cause…cause I don’t know which one of those people I am. The person who beat him or the person who gave in. Would I…would I hurt him?”
S: “And then he died anyway. Man, that whole situation was fucked.”
J: “Yeah. This is all pretty fucked.”
S: “I told Babylon about peace and love and they drug their prophet to the edge of the city and shot him full of arrows. I saw them loot some old lady’s room”
J: “Yeah. Kind of weird when you put it that way.”
S: “(beat) Ironic might be a better word.”
J: “Maybe. But I think the irony was lost on them.”
S: “What do you mean?”
J: “The prophet put the jewels on the door, and you said to tear the jewels down. The prophet told them that the sculptors and tanners worked inferior trades, and you said they should be equals. He said that peace meant order. You said that peace meant freedom. You said they needed to cast off their old way of doing things and welcome the new. The prophet created their old way of doing things. He symbolized the old way. He was the old way. So, no more old way of doing things, no more prophet.”
S: “Huh. Right, so, it’s like…they needed to get rid of his…uh…his power there in order to have true peace and love. And the easiest way to do it was to just…get rid of him. Like literally. People have been trying to figure this shit out for how many years? Like, since forever? Since we had cities. It’s not like I should expect them to magically change overnight. They’re only human. So am I, right? (Beat) And it wasn’t all that bad to melt into the river and turn into a bird. (sighs)  And I…I’ve got a free pet. (weak laughter) I hope I’m not supposed to feed it.”
J: “What does it feel like? Like physically.”
S: “What does it feel like? I don’t know…uh. Think of what it feels like to have a spleen, only its moving, and its also a parrot thing. That’s what it feels like.”
J: “—I can’t imagine it.”
S: “Yeah, well, it’s pretty weird.”
J: “You know what it said to me, right before it charged back at me?”
S: “What? You didn’t tell me.”
J: “It said, ‘I’m ready.’ It wasn’t scared, it wasn’t angry, it was…it was calm as could be. It didn’t want to hurt me. It’s almost like it wanted to die.”
S: “I don’t know if that reassures me all that much.”
J: “I wasn’t sure...I thought that it might...but…(sighs) I don’t know.”
S: “Thanks. I guess.” (beat) “So what’s our plan? Follow the river until we find the door marked, ‘This way to the real world!’?”
J: “Maybe we have to. Unless I can talk to Meagan. Reach her somehow.”
S: “You think you can?”
J: “She’s out there somewhere. But who knows. Time might be moving at a different speed here. She might be close to rescuing us, but from our perspective it could feel like...”
S: “Like...”
J: “A long time.”
S: “How long?”
J: “Years. Centuries. Hard to say.”
S: “Well let’s hope it doesn’t take too long.”
J: “A century isn’t as long as it seems. Once you make it past the first one, the next couple just fly by. Comparatively speaking.” She leaned back into the grass.
S: “Comparatively speaking, huh? Great. Do you think it’s worth it to try to sleep?”
J: “Who knows. I’m not sure what time it is.” She shut her eyes.
S: “I’ll try. I’m a heavy sleeper. (beat, laughs) I mean, of course you’re a heavy sleeper, Sapphire, you’re dead! Am I right?”
J: I sat beside her as she tried to fall asleep, equally uncertain as to how much a ghost actually needed to sleep. Or when it would be day time. Or if there would be day time. Or really, what to do with myself now that Sapphire had laid down and shut her eyes. Should I lay down? Maybe it would take me to the ocean of dreams—or maybe even back to my body—if I tried to fall asleep.
S: “I can see through my goddamn eyelids. (Sigh)”
J: “I’m...uh...sorry.” Sapphire rolled over onto her belly.
S: “This is a little better.”
J: “Right....good.” I laid back, looking up towards the flickering sky. My eyelids were...also translucent. It was like looking into a deep dark tinted window. Following Sapphire’s lead, I rolled over onto my stomach to block out the light. Silence for a little while. I mulled over the day. It felt as though it had been a thousand years since I’d woken up in Gerry’s guest room in the morning and I had not slept since—it felt like those thousand years had passed without any rest. I drifted into a dead sleep, one heavy and almost entirely bereft of dreaming. I felt my body melt away—I felt like I was somersaulting into the air, hurtling into space like a satellite hit with a rocket, aimlessly tumbling through the sky. A good sleep—something that I needed more than I realized.

At the edge of the sky, the atmosphere was coming unwoven, coiling around the planet in blue and white ribbons. I could see them peel away, floating up into a bizarre otherworldly space beyond my comprehension. I watched this for a while, until I started to feel the presence of something looking down at me. A pair of lustrous silver eyes leered down at me, shrouded by curly blonde hair. A sinister face, hundreds of times larger than the entire planet. Human, but only superficially--upon closer inspection any veneer of humanity on the face proved only illusory. It studied us like bacteria under a microscope.

(THE SOUND OF A VERY LOUD FOGHORN TYPE SOUND)

        I jolted awake, freezing still as I heard the footsteps of three men approaching us.

Sailor 1: The poor girl looks dead, sir. I’m not so sure about the other one.
Sailor 2: Indeed. It is a worrisome omen finding two corpses on the shore on our return.
Dedjerba: Quit your superstitious yammering. Let’s have a closer look…
John: He studied our clothes and bodies carefully. As he did so, I looked into his mind, treading carefully for fear of dislodging anything important. His name was Dedjerba—he had navigated this river all the way to its source—a great ring of glaciers at the edge of the doldrums. His own city saw him as a hero of great and timeless renown.
Dedjerba: Perhaps we ought to try to awaken her.
Sailor 1: Aye, sir. (Claps) Hey! Hey there! You dead? Hello?
Sapphire: (Screams) Ahh! Who’s there!
Sailor 2: By the gods! She’s alive!
Ded: Fair maiden, what terrible things have befallen you? Have you fallen into the river?
Sph: Oh...uh…
John: I rolled over, and Sapphire looked at me, shrugging and trying to stammer out a response
Sph: ...I, I’m—no... Yes? ...no. No. Definitely not. Hi there. Pleasure to meet you. My name’s, uh. Sapphire. This is John.
J: She stood up, reaching out to greet him. The man stared down at her outstretched hand.
Ded: Do you mean to give me something?
Sph: What? No! It’s a handshake. I guess those haven’t been invented yet where you folks are from?
Sa1: She’s gone mad sir!
Sa2: I’d say! Look into those eyes. Mad as Oi’te’lotep.
Ded: Settle down. (sighs) This is my first mate Telemakso, my navigator Eurycleo. And I...
J: And you are no doubt Dedjerba.
Ded: Ah, you have heard of me!
J: Uh sure...ly. Your name is among the most renowned in all parts of the world.
Sph: Yeah, yeah. Desherbert. I’ve heard of you.
Ded: How delightful it is to meet people who have heard of my exploits. I have indeed traveled to the very edge of the world, staring into the birthplace of the river that births all things. I have seen dragons with glowing eyes who growl and fume with smoke through dark valleys. I have seen races of men with two heads, who sharpen their teeth and kill their enemies when they go to war. I have seen cities built in the tops of trees, bridged by oak planks and strong hemp rope; I have seen flowers of colors I did not have words to describe.
Sph: Sounds pretty righteous man.
Dedjerba: Ha! Well, I do not consider myself a righteous man. But what of you two? Why have we found you lying in the grass alongside the river Ia? From whence do you come?
Sph: You take this one, John. I don’t wanna repeat of yesterday.
John: Yes. Oh course, it is only natural that one should ask, no? One never knows when they will meet another explorer.
Dedjerba: You also are explorers, then?
John: Indeed. We have gone on a voyage into the mountains of Nuur, where winged oxen with the tails of scorpions stampede across open valleys, where kingdoms of dwarf-men huddle around campfires exchanging sacred oaths in peculiar tongues, where the flowers that bloom glow in the night.
Dedjerba: What a pleasure to meet the both of you. And yet you travel alone?
John: We once were many, but we lost many of our party in the fire swamp.
Dedjerba: The fire swamp?
John: Yes,  yes, the fire swamp. Filled with giant rats.
Sapphire: Are you making all this shit up?
John: That last one was from a movie. I don’t know, I’m kind of just pulling all this out of my ass. I used to LARP in high school and...nevermind. Just follow my lead.
Dedjerba: What fearsome and terrible things you must have witnessed. Perhaps I could offer you a ride on my ship. We cannot be more than three days back to our home city. It would be at least a fortnight on foot. And you can regale me with your stories.
John: Certainly. My navigator here and I would love to be blessed with some pleasant company.
Dedjerba: Telemakso. Take this man to the rowboat and bring him aboard. I await our conversations, good sir.
John: Of course. (Talks) Anyone asks, you’re my navigator.
Sapphire: Yeah, so I’ve heard. Hope no one asks me to look at a compass or some shit cause then we’re fucked.

S3E5: Becoming Smoke/Avoid Crowded Areas

A mysterious entity welcomes Meagan to the outer darkness, and introduces her to power beyond her comprehension.
Warning: Contains material and content that is inappropriate for children and that may disturbing for some people. Features two large cannon shots.
CAST
Kyla Valenti: Meagan
The Voice of Many Prisms: The Voice of Many Prisms
Timothy Vilgiate: John, Crowd, Timothy Vilgiate
speech2text(.)org: Salvia


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Meagan: (Read all of the directions aloud)

“Goodbye. (Long Pause. The chimes begin as words flood from her and she is surrounded by images, represented by audible, undescribed scenes panning from right to left, from from to back. Meagan reads the following words: “Roller coaster; Guadalupe; Grandma; Colorado; Emptiness, Hollowed out; Silent; Silence, Silence, Silence, Silence”)” She says, reading her stage directions allowed for comic effect. A pause for laughter.” At this point, maybe we could cut to some kind of diner scene? “Control Alt M Comment Sure I like this idea, maybe ease the mood after we told them Tanya’s brother was murdered since they all know who did it. Go through twitter and see if we can pick up some relevant lingo from the target demo. Here’s a skeleton of what I’m thinking:

“Hello. You’re with me at a diner”, I say to you, leaning forward to offer you companionship, we are friends. (Note: She is now in a late 2000s self conscious knockoff of a 1990s sitcom, a self conscious parody which has become so self conscious so as to have no actual storyline, only a vague set of self conscious posturings),

“Your supposed to read the words. The words on the script.”
“What?”
“The script in front of you.”
“O...oh. Oh. Uh.  She laughs. Uh...Oh. (Forced sitcom laughter) So millenial. Haha student debt. Depression.”
“Whoa, millenial.”
“Really. Millenial, like, so millenial. I don’t even millenial.”
“Right, but. Uh…”
“Millenial. Bernie Sanders. Working three jobs. Hashtag relate.
“No one uses the word hashtag.”
“Hashtag?”
“This where it stops being millenial (Begin Glitching) and we get to the murder. Tanya is still processing what she’s done (End Glitching)”

Still smoking mouths of cannons
Munched in the caves
Like cigars. Claw their way
The armies, holy vultures;
Who crease the spines of mountains,
To fit them
Into envelopes, .
Their mouths hung open in disdain,
War pounds in their ear drums,
Music has no bounds.
God is a lion,
We are the lambs.
(A sudden crescendo of warlike noises and violence culminates in a low and rumbling silence. Numbing silence. Meagan cannot breath. She cannot feel her body. She cannot sense anything. She cannot see herself from first person, no matter how hard she tries. She is clutching onto the side of a spinning marble, a hue darker than the blackness around it. Our eyes are starting to adjust.)

“Hello Meagan”, you say.
“Hello?”
“Hello Meagan, I am the voice of many prisms.”
“Oh, to the voice of many prisms. Hail.”
“Oh to the voice of many prisms, bars that rattle,
Executioner.
The voice of many prisms.”
“It cannot stand.
The body cannot hand.
Cries out in sorrow,
The organism.”
“Hold up your head.”, you insist to yourself,
Reminding yourself
That you insist
To yourself
That you
Remind
Yourself
To
Insist.
“God is the cavern.”
“The cavern?”
“God is the cavern,
We are the cigar that smokes in its mouth.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,
But In this case it wasn’t, it was a cannon,
We were at war.
We were hiding in the cavern.
God is the cavern.
Smoke rose from the cannon.
We faced an army.
“I am drifting through space.
I can’t get back to my body.
You’re making me say this.
How are you making me say this?”
“You have become smoke. Rise up and you shall return to the mouth of god.”

(STOP READING STAGE DIRECTIONS FOR REAL NOW IT’S ACTUALLY NOT LIKE THAT ANYMORE)
(Inhale deeply, literally)

S3E4: Peace and Love

John and Sapphire respond to their new situation in Oi, unsure whether or not it is safe or right to intervene in the city's affairs.
Rivers of the Mind was written and produced by Timmy Vilgiate, who also played the part of John. Sophia Doss played the part of Sapphire, and C.j. Hackett played the part of the prophet. Crowd voices were provided by Hugo Delgado and Michael Merriam. Bird reference sounds were collected by Josep del Hoyo, Santiago Imberti, Laurent Demongin, Carlos Gussoni, and Scott Olmstead, all contributors to the Internet Bird Collection.

As always, Freesound.org provided most of our sound effects. Sound effects in this episode included "smashing toilet" by KeyKrusher, "Glass bottle Smashing" by awholenewlife1, "Glass Breaking" by Samgd14, "Hitting in a Face" by florianreichelt, "Crowd in Panic" by ienba, "20181018.scream03.wav" by dobroide, "human male scream terrified" by natemarler, "Scream, female, x2" by peridactyloprtix, "Footsteps Running away Fading" by Rudmer Roteveel, "yell kid male help help" by benjaminharveydesign, "boulderfall1" by AGC66, "Single Rock hit Dirt" by worthahep88, "Female horror cries: Help" by AmeAngelofSin, "Arrow Impact 3" by Ali6868, "Caball galop passa i frene" by Crater RF, "Boiling Towel" by unfa, "Heavy Rain" by lebaston100, "Whoosh" and "Big water splash" by qubodup, "Big wave splash" by soundmary, "niagara falls_02052017_002" by miastodzwiekow, "20130101_221450_rattsjoen_creaking ice" by hoersturz, "Rain heard 900 meters below the sea surface" by MBARI_MARS, "18_Underwater_Waves1" by tomtenney, "01 Morning Listening" by listening to whales, "Lobster Breathing" by baryy, "Clay Pottery Drop 'n' Break" by Kinoton, "Protest01" by karymronda, "Any_Word2_ses2"" Any_Word_ses2" and "War_ses2"  by freesound, "Crowd/Mob/Riot Noise" by FillMat, "Crowd.Yay.Applause.25ppl.Long" and "Crowd.Yay.Applause.25ppl.Short" by Jesse Pash, "Water Splashes" by Phil25,  "Jump into water splash sound" by Nikhill Kumar, "OneWaveInTelukNipah" by LoopUdu, "Hydrophone-Dissolving Vitamin C Tablet" by Sonic-ranger, "Hydrophone underwater stream quiet pipe" and "Hydrophone underwater stream close pipe gurgle" by Javier Zumer, "HighflowRiver" by Cagan Celik and "cicade at nighttime animals 02" by Eelke.

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J: Within a few hours, the celebration of Sapphire’oi the Foreign Prophet and her ascension to subordinate godhood had died down. The sunless sky now flickered with uncanny distant flames, like a huge gas stove burning in the wind. People filed back into their homes, paying me respects and asking me for favor, but rarely able to talk for very long. Soon enough, a pale twilight simmered all around us, a darkness flickering against the sides of the clay buildings. In the darkness, the buildings started to grow more and more beautiful, so beautiful they made my heart ache, their walls glowed a soft purple set against rolling blue plains with a silence more pristine than anything I’d ever heard in my life. No voices, no music, no clattering of wares for sale down the cramped, winding streets, only the faint sound of the river in the distance, and the wind that carried lukewarm air into our dwelling place.

S: Now that no one was watching, I reached for John’s hand. He was staring at the foreign idols lining the walls of our designated home. When he felt me touch him, he gasped just a little bit, before weakly smiling, and turn to face me. A moment of silence. Of complete, amnesiac calm.

S: “So.”
J: “Yeah?”
S: “This is pretty fucked up, huh?”,
J:  “I don’t know. I mean, obviously by our standards.”
S: “What do you mean?”
J: “Both of us grew up with…you know. Electricity. Medicine. This sprawling global supply chain where you at least knew hey, this thing is made in, uh. China. Or Germany, or something, I guess, where you came from? I don’t know. But even then, I think we’re all still scared of new ideas. And try to preempt them.”
S: “So you’re saying its like, almost like the Soviet Union and the US almost.”
J: “Sure.”
S: “Like, I’m communism, and this is America, so…have a temple filled with idols that washed up in the river?”
J: “Yeah…or. No? Maybe. I don’t know, I don’t really know much about the Cold War thing. I’m just saying. It’s part of…part of human nature, I guess.”
S: “That doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up, though. It’s a pretty fucked up part of human nature.”
J: “…yeah. It is.”
S: “So what do we do about it? I’m not just gonna sit here and be some compliant petty god.”
J: “There’s a river. He said he picked up an idol from it. Maybe if we follow it we’ll get to another city, and maybe they’ll have some…uh…sense of where we are. And how to get back home, if there is a home to get back to.”
S: I got what he was saying. But it didn’t sit right with me—to just run away. I could see in the faces of those people out there that what I said about peace and love resonated with them. What I said about their art, about like…the value of what they were doing...mattered. And I knew if I left, their prophet would just twist what I said to make the people conform like a bunch of fucking sheep. John knew what I was thinking. He gulped, and squeezed my hand, not altogether sure of himself. I didn’t get what his problem was. His eyes darted back to me.
J: “We don’t know where we are or what’s going on here. If we’re too far in the past, anything you do could interfere with the timeline.”
S: “Yeah. Okay. (Pause) But you know what’s really gonna interfere with the timeline if we’re way back in the past or some shit? If people just keep on thinking that people who work with their hands and actually build the shit that people depend on are second class citizens. If prophets keep thinking they need to make sure people are isolated from new ideas in order to keep power. If people think that peace means order and love means being a condescending asshole. I don’t wanna sit here in my fucking temple using human nature as an excuse to not do shit. Come on, can’t you make people trip or something with your mind? Man, if you made that prophet trip…”
J: “He could what, magically gain enlightenment? Okay, sure. Or he might go insane and bring back human sacrifice, or decide to march up the river to destroy whatever city that first idol floated down from. Or, I don’t know. Maybe he gains enlightenment, but, like, who’s to say that’s gonna look like exactly what we want it to look like? I’ve tried fucking with people’s heads before, Sapphire, and it’s a coin flip. Maybe they’re changed forever, maybe they’re worse off than how they started. I don’t wanna risk it. We need to get out of whereever we are—that’s what we need to do.”
S: “Well, whatever, John. I just feel like we need to do something. I don’t know what yet but…I’ll get there, I guess. It’d be nice if you helped, but…<sighs> Look, I’m gonna go on a walk, okay?”
J: “Suit yourself.”
S: “I’m gonna see if I can find anything useful.” John kind of pissed me off, but he was right that I probably needed more of a strategy to actually fix this place. I slipped out into the night—almost pitchblack, save the dim light of a distant blue flame on the horizon. Empty rows of fantastical, cartoonish houses. I heard people snoring, faintly, from inside some of them. Some making love. Some whispering to each other. I wondered if anyone had heard me and John arguing. Our voices had gotten loud, hadn’t they? I tried not to think about it, and instead focused on tracing the source of the river. In the eerie emptiness of the city street, I crept forth. The bird flew circles around the inside of my head, seeming to draw me towards the river, though I did not know why. I felt sorry I’d killed it. But glad it hadn’t gone away. The bird seemed brave, wise in a way I didn’t know how to be, intimately close to me as it flew through the empty spaces in my ghostly form. Not totally at rest there inside of me quite yet.

        We got to the river. It was bigger than any other river I’d seen in my life, a great snake of jet black water slithering off into the distance around these empty islands and cragged rocks. IT was a parade of molten spirits of distant glaciers, spirits that didn’t just feel like distant things but that felt like my brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and grandmothers. The water appeared to me first from the top of a hill near the edge of town—I could see huge pieces of driftwood floating in the water. The wind grew stronger near the river. Off in the distance, I could perceive lightning—there on the horizon, a storm was brewing over a faraway city upriver from here, bringing the water surging to life. As I descended the hill, the river slowly vanished from sight underneath another sharp incline, but I still felt its rushing water rolling over my skin and through my body, and heard its roar inside of my eardrums. Summiting a second hill, I saw the river once again—within it floated the entirety of a small wooden house, a cabin that bobbed up and down in the water.

        The river had an immense gravity that grew ever stronger as I approached it. The bird took refuge inside of my ribcage, letting out a loud caw that only I could hear. I clutched my stomach—a sickening and dreadful feeling hit me in my chest—a kind of intense nosedive towards some kind of unknown world. The water churned as I got closer. I shrunk back, not wanting to go near something so powerful, so much bigger than me. I worried that, a single wrong move, and I’d be swept away, down the river, never to return. Shutting my eyes, I held the image of the river in my mind, bringing it to life as a blurred, celestial painting of orange and green and purple, a neon line drawing. Half drunk, I knelt down, the gravity of the river now too strong to resist, and I extended my hands towards the deep black water. I heard the tumultous sounds of the river all around me, with my legs and knees struggling to stay rooted to the gravel and sand of the shoreline. The bird grew restless, unnerved. I tried to call to it. “It’s okay birdy. It’s okay.”, The animal seemed to understand me, flapping its wings and bobbing its head up and down. I knew that it did that cause I could feel it moving. Through a strange sixth sense, I knew that the bird was there, that it felt comforted by the sound of my voice.

A mystical feeling beyond my control made me want to reach into the water, to embrace the spirits within, and so I let them, looking beyond my fear. My hands dipped into the water, and slowly lost their form. I entered the river. The river and I became one—I melted into it, and it melted into me—I spread out my fingers and the river started to lurch and churn upwards—I pulled back my hands and it came towards me, bending in my direction but continuing to flow on—its force almost knocked me over, and so I spun around to tear my hands loose from the water. Dizzy, I turned my back to the river and collapsed to the ground. I shivered and waited for my hands to start to feel like actual hands again. Once they did, and I was calmer, my eyes turned back to the river. I felt even closer now to its churning water. I felt swept away by a deep and jealous love for the river. I lifted up my hands and tilted my head up to the sky. I could feel the bird inside of my stomach soar up into my head, and around my skull, until it came into my eye. I saw it there, looking up at the sky, and knew that if I let it go, it’d go into the river. I turned back and threw my hands down. For a moment, I squinted with suspicion at this situation. For one, I had a bird in my eye. I literally had a bird in my eye. Is this a medical condition? Is this going to hurt me? No. The bird was literally two inches from my imaginary ghostly heart a few minutes ago. If this was going to damage me in someway, it probably would have already done something.

Heeding the bird’s wishes, I let it soar into the river—as it did, felt my mind sync with the immense body of water, spreading out so that I could feel the contours of each shore surrounding it, feel my body flowing around the rocks and islands and driftwood. I didn’t fight it. I went with the flow. I let my whole body dissolve into the river, let it take me under and stretch me out over what felt like miles—I became one with the water and the spirits inside of it. The pollution of faraway cities coursed through my heart, along with the life forces of fish and frogs and tadpoles and stingrays, which I felt myself feeding and cleansing and carrying away. Remembering the city of Oi, I started to grow still. The spirits, the bird, they were just as pissed off as I had been just a second ago. Without really thinking, I turned back the course of the river, and shaped myself into a towering wall of water. People in the city, beneath the light of torches, went out to see what was happening, woken up by the imposing roar of the river, whose water was now bent back like a tidal wave. I lifted up my hands, and I rose into the air as a titanic mass of water, letting the bird melt back into me and guide me into flight, to guide the edges of myself back into form. The river crashed back into itself, flooding the shoreline so that it nearly cut into the town. People below screamed and took shelter.

I gained in elevation, sommersaulting and backflipping over the tiny town, grazing the tops of buildings, cutting across wide open fields and sending the cattle there stampeding for cover. I flew overhead lost in a dance, a dance with the river that I had become—in my flight I was not simply Sapphire or Mary Ann the dead girl from the sixties, but I was the river, a force of nature scattering magic over the city like a thundercloud, blowing everyone’s minds, opening them up to this kind of wonder they had always had in the back of their minds but had never really opened themselves up to—I contemplated my edges and sculpted myself, adding form and definition to my feathers, my beak, my eyes….
J: “Sapphire, is…is that you?”
S: “Mhmmm. I’m a river. Right now I’m trying to be a bird.”
J: “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
S: “Thanks.”
J: “So…uh. Listen. I’m having second thoughts about the whole not intervening here thing.”
S: “Yeah? That’s nice. Clearly I was going along with your idea.”
J: “Look, the prophet is getting something together to cast a spell to make you go away. I’m thinking…I’m thinking we can actually weaken his authority if it doesn’t work, and maybe…maybe you can tell him…uh. Give him some laws. Make him listen. But it has to be in a language he understands.”
S: “Right. But, just to clarify, man, I’m not totally in control of what I’m doing right now. I’m just kinda going with the flow, like…I’m not actually sure how to fly exactly. And even then, I don’t think I can really talk. **gurgles ferociously** Yeah did you hear that? No one is going to take that seriously.”
J: “Huh. Alright. Well—”
S: “I said “Suck my giant river bird dick”, but--
J: “I know what you said. How about this? I’ll hide out in the crowd. Maybe I can…uh…I can make them hear your voice.” Sapphire hurtled over the city once again, this time coming near the rooves of the buildings. She bent her wings inward so as to squeeze through, hurtling towards the prophet, right as he prepared to cast three stones onto the ground

P: “…from your dwellings—a terrible beast rises from the river. Oh spirits, send it—”

J: Sapphire hit him with the full force of her body, and hurled him up into the sky. His rocks fell from his hand, as his mouth gasped for air—Sapphire coiled around him like an immense serpent, immobilizing him from the shoulders down in a great column of water. Slowly and gently she brought him to rest on the ground, calming her mind in meditation—she tried to think of the patterns she had seen in the bark of the tree the other night—the tiny winding canyons and their sap came to life across her liquid skin. “Are you ready? Do you know what to say?”
S: “I don’t think they’ll listen to a voice in their heads. I think you need to make him talk.”
J: “Well...I can try.”  I shut my eyes and concentrated, feeling the boundaries of my mind stretch and expand.
Ryan: “I told you you couldn’t make it here without using the things I’d taught you. I told this was what you are.”
J: All at once the crowd felt a faint trembling in the fabric of reality—their eyes filled with the knowledge of new colors, the boundaries between their minds momentarily weakened as their prophet—an almighty hero who they trusted with their lives—struggled to resist the clutches of some bizarre magic. The flickering of the blue flames in the night sky intensified and filled them with dread.
R:  “You really believe I’m dead? You really believe this isn’t exactly what I wanted to happen?”
J: From within the column of water, the prophet struggled to seal his mind against the alien force that now pressed in from every side. He summoned every spirit he knew of to his aid to project a wall against the overwhelming sensation of enclosure, of being cut off from his senses.
R: “You’re weak, John.”
J: The prophet’s eyes rolled back, his jaw coming loose and his senses coming entirely undone. I struggled to keep his bowels from evacuating into the living column of water that surrounded him, and then worked to form a bridge between Sapphire’s mind and his.
S: “Hey guys, it’s me, the river God.”
J: The first of Sapphire’s words trickled into me—I tried to filter them into the wording of the prophet.
P: “Behold! It is I, Nti, God of the River, Provider of Fish, Bringer of Idols and Driftwood.”
S: “So, I know that this guy here is your prophet and he’s like, okay, but he’s done some shit to kind of piss me off. Actually, your whole town’s kind of fucked up right now, so I’d just like to clear up a couple rules.” 
P: “Your prophet Oi’te’lotep has served you well, but he has done much to anger me—he has decieved you, and led you down a wicked path. I have awakened you all here to issue new laws and to right his wrongs. Such new laws you may break at your peril. I looked out into this city, Oi, meant to be the home of gods and men, and I see that some of you believe yourselves to be above others, to believe the women of lesser status, and believe the worksmen and shepherds lesser still. You distort the meanings of the words spoke to you by my prophet, the words peace and love. And so I must issue a correction to you all. I must command you to treat all men and women as equals, no matter their trade—as brothers and sisters—not speaking down to them, giving them all equal respect.

Let everyone share a part of his bounty so that all may eat, drink, and know peace and love. Peace being not order but freedom—to love, to create art, to enjoy life. Love being not deference and obedience but nurturing and gentle kindness. And… I don’t know how to say that part. I can try… What do you mean I’m saying that outloud? Oh. Sorry. Do not be afraid of people who aren’t like you. Welcome them in with open arms. Lastly, I must tell you something grave and serious. Long ago, your prophet found an idol in the river which I hoped to reveal to you on my own. Instead, haughtily, the prophet declared a temple for the god and dubbed it the temple of the foreign prophet, fearful that, if someone else discovered the idol, they might be free to learn for themselves the idol’s true nature. Many more idols I sent to you, and many more heresies he committed. I even sent you my prophet, and he consigned her to the temple to silence her. I hereby command you to strike the jewels from the crowns of this temple, and all temples in the city, and to let all men and women enter freely. Henceforth the temple shall not be the temple of the foreign prophet, but the temple of peace and love, and its got to be like a cool open space where you can do art and like express yourself, and its no big deal if you get high there, you know? And maybe you can do music there and stuff.”

J: The column of water bloomed outwards into a cascade of rings, and lifted off into the sky, before recombining before the eyes of a dumbstruck audience into another titanic bird. Sapphire soared gleefully around the city as the people cheered, flooding the streets to tear loose the jewels from the arches. The prophet panted for air, trembling and bitterly cold. The people who lived on the cities edge freely entered the town, weaving in and out of the temples and homes which they had not been allowed to enter with cheers of “Peace and Love!” In the temple of the foreign prophet, a craftsman brought a ladder that could reach into the chimney spout, urging people to climb up and, as the river god commanded, get high.
P: “No…no…“It’s all…it’s all ruined. The gods…the gods are…the gods are fleeing the city. “You did this. You and that foreign prophet. You’ve…you’ve killed my city.”
J: He pulled out a dagger and started to walk towards me before a child, his face bruised, flung a rock at his face. His mother picked another one up, and threw it at him.
P: “How dare you!”
J: He coughed up blood.
P: “How dare you do this to me!”
J: An arrow landed near him. Three hunters, riding on the backs of wild looking horses, sped down the street, preparing to chase him out of town. A crowd of people followed, shouting “Kill the prophet” and “Peace and love!” in a bloody roar. He tripped and stumbled, trying to escape. Two of the hunters grabbed him by his arms, and dragged him away from the town, letting his feet graze the sand of the riverbank. He kicked and screamed and struggled. People who’d been sleeping in their beds through the ordeal looked out with horror at the streets below as the jewels that adorned their houses were chipped away.

Sapphire flew over my head one last time, spinning in a mesmerizing dance, before tearing loose from the river water and letting herself softly glide back to the ground. She looked at me, smiling as she landed, before she looked around and saw a group of people storming the inside of one of the tall clay houses, pulling a woman out into the streets. Her smile faded.
S: “Where did the prophet go?”
J: I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t want to. Staring blankly off at the river, she shook her head.
S: “I thought…I thought that…”
J: Her words were interuppted by a loud crash from the distance, as blacksmiths took their hammers to the temple of the God of Wealth. A team of men carried some of the idols that had fallen out of favor to the river.
S: “Let’s just go.”
J: “Sapphire...I…”
S: “Don’t. Come on. (muttering) Fucking bird...”

S3E3: The Temple of the Foreign Prophet

Sapphire and John enter Oi, and the prophet takes Sapphire to a temple built for foreign gods and foreign prophets.

CAST
Timmy Vilgiate: John
Sophia Doss: Sapphire
C.j. Hackett: Oi'te'lotep
CROWD
Natalie Ruths, Elannia Lake, Joshua Leano, Daniel Rojas, Cindy Verzwyvelt, Christina Vilgiate, Marissa Burdette, Anthony Carlson, Priscilla Yip, Collin Estes, Erin Caitlinn, and Anthony Vilgiate.
MUSIC
Performed by Timmy Vilgiate on prepared mandolin, mandola, guitar, and analog synthesizer.
SOUND EFFECTS
From freesound.org:  "Italian village no traffic" by squidge316, "Highflow River" by Cagan Celik, "G52-05 Ox Cart" by craigsmith, "Crowd Drums" by dobroide,  "Dolen village July morning..." by mihal40, "street-market-2" by stevious, "chinese flute hulusi" by iluppai, "crowd yay applause 25 people" by Jesse Pash, and "crowd cheer" by Adam n.

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We reached the city with a tail of men, women and children following us close behind, eagerly reciting and clinging to the words of Sapphire, the foreign prophet. The local prophet walked in front of us, his head held slightly low, his lips pursed together, his face set in a weak grimace. His visibly tense expression eased into a hesitant relief as we grew nearer to the city—the city proper—the city of peace, light, and goodwill—and escaped the desperate, discontent buildings of the outer settlement. All activity stopped as soon as his feet touched the sandstone streets, streets that all the unclean masses filling up the alleys and rooftops around us knew they could not walk down. In a chain of fluttering noises, the conversations of men and women, the playing of pipers and drummers, the selling of wares, were all quelled by a shockwaves of whispers that resonated on down the street and through the alleyways. “The prophet has returned.”, echoing on down the pavement over and over, drawing attention to where we were until the whole city started to file into the street, dragging our cart again to a crawl. Behind us extended a crowd of workers from the city’s edge clothed in rough cloth and tree bark; in front of us stretched on a mass of people clothed in elegant yarns. Our cart occupied the frontier of this boundary.

Noting the jewels above the open doors, the lines cut into the clean, gleaming sidewalks, the poor nervously inched back, trying to stay off of the sidewalks, away from the houses, from the temples.
P: “Good people of Oi, this city at the heart of the world, the place where the gods walk among men. For seven days have I rested in the dwelling place of Amatep’oi, drinking only the blood of his kill, waiting for that great and powerful hunter to tell me the meaning of the vision he sent to me. The vision was a warning, which you all must heed. (Pause, anxious murmurs from the crowd) Already there have been cows fallen sick, as you very well know. And the custom prescribed to us by Shedali’Oi the Shepherd says that we must cordon off the sick cows, and slaughter them cows if they are not better after a fortnight. Indeed this custom must not change, but, I Amatep warns you, the cows must be burnt, not eaten, and must not be taken for leather, or the city will fall to a great plague. This is the will of Amatep. Anyone who violates his decree shall be chased into the wilderness by our cities greatest hunters and slain, their body burnt and cast into the doldrums, for they will have violated no law of man, but the law of Amatep, god of the hunt, and he will demand revenge.”.
J: Moans and whispers of dissatisfaction blended with mystified hums or acquiescent groans. No beef blood for the rituals, no cow hearts for the harvest festival, no leather to make fresh garments for the next Spirit’s Night. The price of leather, knew the merchants, would rise; the fishermen wondered if they could catch enough fish to satiate the hunger of the people. A trio of hunters, in jest, began to make jokes about what fun it would be to exact the punishment proscribed; an elderly priest in the temple of Shedali’oi nodded with satisfaction in hearing his god receiving some exposure; a drummer and a flautist took advantage of the momentary distraction to copulate in a temple dedicated to the Nyra, God of Death. Having given them time to process the edict, the prophet raised one hand into the air
Prophet: “Quiet! Listen to me, for there is more that I must tell you! On my return from the home of Amatep, I encountered a great and powerful foreign prophet, just as the one I foretold to you. Her name is Sapphire’oi, prophet of the Kingdom of 2017 Idols, a faraway kingdom. Wandering deeper into the Doldrums than any man has ever gone, Sapphire killed a ghost bird and stripped its bones of meat when it attacked her manservant John. The spirits have sent Sapphire as a blessing to the city—she is the foreign prophet, of whom so many have spoken, of which so many hymns and songs have been sung. She comes bearing a message of peace and love. Peace, in that men must know order and not backslide into quarrelling; love, in that men must show the gentleness of a father to all of lower station.”
S: “Well, uh, actually, what I meant was—”
P: “As the prophecy has demanded, Sapphire must be delivered to the temple which has been prepared for her, the temple of the foreign prophet. And so, on this auspicious occasion, I declare, in accordance with Amatep the Red, Nyra the Black, and Shedali the White, together with all the spirits of this city, that henceforth, this day, the twelvth day of the time of low waters, shall be known as the Day of the Foreign Prophet. All workers today must rest, save the shepherds in the fields, the streets shall fill with song and dance, our mouths should feast on the bounty of this city, and we shall bear Sapphire to her temple in a grand parade, that she may join the ranks of our city’s gods!”
J: The crowd burst into an uproar, as the piper and the drummer slid from the temple of death with disheveled hair and clothing lead the crowd in a song—the street erupted with dancing, and our cart slowly started to move like a boat down the crowded street (Lines assigned at random to members of the ensemble) “Foreign prophet, be welcome.”, said some of the people as we passed by, others, “May your manservant be well”, and a few, “I pray your temple will be to your liking, foreign prophet.” Sapphire began to tune them out, and turned to me to engage in a silent, telepathic conversation.
S: This is kinda uh…far out man. Where the fuck are we? Is this for real, or are we tripping?”
J: It was difficult to put to words. All of it felt real, but not tangible--the lingering traces of minds, real minds, stitched together every piece of the landscape--I could sense it, but couldn’t formulate a way to explain it. “We’re not tripping. But... I…I can’t say for sure. This place seems familiar…. Same with the people. And I know Ryan’s dead, but I can sense him here, somewhere, hanging in between the buildings, lurking in their minds, in our minds…it’s not just him though. It’s...it’s other people. Lot’s of them.”
S: “You don’t think I’m gonna get sacrificed or something?”
J: “No, no, from what I can tell,  Nyra the Black told them to stop doing human sacrifices a long time ago. Plus, I mean, you’re a ghost.”
S: “This sounds crazy but the prophet guy seems familiar to me. Like…I swear to God I’ve seen him before, but I can’t remember where.”
J: “In the lab?”
S: “Maybe.”

J: Our conversation was cut short when we reached the temple of the foreign prophet, a tall clay dome with a rounded chimney stretching high up into the sky. Over its entryway hung a semicircle of white and red gems. The crowd around us cheered, but knew that they could not enter—only the prophet could do so. He dismounted his cart and led us inside. The crowd’s voices faded to a dull roar from within the warm clay vessel—there were no windows, only a tall chimney. The air inside felt heavy, and smelled of mildew. Along the wall, there were carvings of foreign idols, idols made of wood, or stone, or thatch, or glass, each placed upon short wooden tables. Small golden bowls filled with a cow’s blood rested in front of each one. The prophet walked around them in a circle, his head hanging low.
P: A foreign prophet.
J: He pulled an herb from a bag on his waist, a dried up plant that once had bushed leaves and yellow flowers. Pinching it between his fingers, he made another circle about the room, crushing the herb over the heads of the idols, and then coming to Sapphire, to adorn her head with the herb. It smelt sweet—sickly sweet.
P: “The Juva flower. The flower of gratitude. Hospitality. I have longed for a foreign prophet to whom I could extend it, and here you are. Of course, you don’t think of yourself as a foreign prophet, do you? No. I’m probably a foreign prophet to you, aren’t I? (Chuckles) Maybe it’s all very suprising to you to find out that I exist. Once I thought I was the only prophet, and this was the only city. But one day, you see, when sitting by the river to talk with it’s spirits. I watched an idol—this one right here, with the hooked eyes—float past me in the water, an idol that I did not recognize. My heart lept in horror. I snatched it up. The idol, inscribed with alien markings, hewn of alien wood, must have come from another city. A foreign city.

With trepidation, I then realized there must be other prophets in these foreign cities, other priests building idols and dedicating houses to them, and endowing them with spirits--giving the spirits names so that the foreign prophets would know their names. I realized that these idols would from time to time drift down the river. Can you imagine my anxiety? What would happen when the next idol floated into town? What if it were not captured by another prophet and instead ended up in the hands of a thoughtless child, who might deliver it to his conniving mother, or his reckless brother, or, worst, a greedy king. Then, the people would all find out at once, all of them learn of the existence of the other prophets,with their foreign gods, inscriptions, and prophecies.

It was not so much a matter of pride, like you might think, but I worried that should the spirits I knew--spirits which, I felt certain, were the same as the foreign spirits only under different names-- should those spirits warn me of coming danger and impose on us a new law, the people would say to themselves ‘Certainly our prophet says one thing...but perhaps another prophet might have another point of view...’ And the people would refuse the will of the spirits. Worse still, as I pondered the existence of foreign prophets, I considered that some might be more malevolent than I, more willing to flatter kings or appease the whims of the people with hollow, unmeasured words. With all these thoughts I hunched there by the river and in white knuckled hands I clutched the invading idol; I squinted with unease at it’s face--a face carved into the likeness of a foreign animal, and I studied its hand, which clutched the branch of a foreign tree. It leered back at me with its pyramid eyes, and outstretched wings. A sinister creation.

Or perhaps this was a blessing. After all, the foreign prophet who serves this idol will one day arrive in my city, I realized. Before he could get to me, I decided to name this idol God of the Foreign Prophet. From time to time, I could relish the people with stories of this god’s character, its powers, it’s foreignness. I proscribed a small temple for him, and all the other foreign gods who washed up on the river bank, complete with rituals and rites to follow. That way, I knew that when that foreigner catches sight of me in his alien eyes, carrying in his alien hands his foreign prophecies, my people will have already met him. They will welcome him in with open arms and known him, for they’ve already seen him through the door of the temple: the foreign prophet. The people would have heard me, a prophet that they trust, introduce his idol to them, and they would have seen me place him here in this temple. They would already know what to think, how to behave, the rituals and celebrations that must be performed for the foreign prophet—he would already have a place at our table, though never at the head—the foreign prophet would never be my equal, for I had made him, named and drawn him before their eyes could see him crawling from the Horizon into the city.

They might welcome that foreign prophet; they might feel touched by her appealing yet impossible words. But if the foreign prophet steps out of line, perhaps the local spirits may tell me of her unfitness. They will tell me the idols of the foreign prophet no longer deserves welcome, that they deserve a quick dragging from the town square back into the river where they came from, and then there will be no more foreign prophet in this city. “Death to the foreigner! Death to the foreigner”, they will shout, once they realize it is the righteous thing to do. But hopefully, the foreign prophet would not take advantage of my hospitality, whenever they did arrive.

A pliable, malleable foreign idol this was, set adrift on the river from another city. A gracious and excellent idol it was for letting me pluck it out of the river, permitting me to make the prophet it foreshadowed into a useful god before he or she or it could make any trouble. Like a man anticipating a great flood, I cast a levybreak against his entry to harness his inevitable flood through the valley, reducing his advance to a slow and steady trickle, setting it at order, and using its force to do the work of a thousand oxen to keep the wheels of the city moving, to water the fields, and most importantly, to allow me to serve my people. As I am sure you feel in your Kingdom, my people are my god. I am their arms reaching out to heaven begging for rain, I am their hands that scour the floor of the forest, finding plants to cure their ills, their mouth prescribing burns of diseased bodies, their stomach, digesting the mystery of a splintered world. My people are my god, and my god cannot think that I’m replaceable.”
Sapphire: The prophet guy got super close to us and I could smell that he didn’t really brush his teeth that well. Or ever. I could see bloodstains from the rituals on his teeth, I could see a menacing and crazed look in his eye. He smiled and backed away, to look at another one of the foreign idols, this one in the shape of a huge wooden bird--he took a drop of blood and smeared it on the eagle’s face with his middle finger. So... that’s kind of fucked up right? What’s he even saying like, trying to scare me or something? Yeah, probably. He led me towards the door. I was still kind of like, uh…what the fuck man? But I didn’t want to incite some kind of riot or something with these people all riled up. On some level, it sounded like he almost had good intentions about the whole thing, as weird as that sounds, like he honestly knows that there’s microbes or something in the sick cattle but he can’t tell them not to eat the cattle without making up some shit about Amatep. But I felt shitty. I felt shitty cause I was being used, I was like a weird puppet without even realizing it. I started to wonder if…if I really should’ve killed that bird anyway. I heard it’s wings behind me, I heard it crying out in my mind, rising above the sound of the prophet as he lifted my right arm up over my head and shouted,
P: “Amatep’oi, Red God of the Hunt; daring God who sculpted the trees from red clay, who slayed the great dragon and from him carved the whole world. Shedali’oi, White God of the Shepherd in the Field; gentle God who led animals into the fields and hid jewels in the mountains; Nyra, Black God of the Grave; patient God who feeds the world with his broken body and cares for the ever burning flames in the sky; all you spirits of the town come out from your dwellings, for now there walks among us the Foreign Prophet, promised to us by her God, the river Ia; In the sight of most holy Oi, I bestow upon her this temple, and pray that she finds and keeps a peaceful home—I bestow upon her a godly name—Sapphire’oi, and present her to the people.”

S3E2: Oi'te'lotep

John and Sapphire have an unexpected encounter while traveling along the vein of silver the discovered in the previous episode.
CAST

Timmy Vilgiate: John
Sophie Doss: Sapphire
C.j. Hackett: Prophet Oi'te'lotep

CROWD

Joshua Leano (Featured as an old man at a threshold), Daniel Rojas (Featured as a sculptor), Cindy Verzwyvelt (Featured as Gebbadali), Christina Vilgiate (Featured as the person Sapphire bumps into), Marissa Burdette, Anthony Carlson, Priscilla Yip, Collin Estes, Erin Caitlinn, and Anthony Vilgiate.
PRODUCTION
Theme and music by Timmy Vilgiate
Production by Timmy Vilgiate
Shoutout to speakers Silbo Gomero language of the Canary Islands, which was sampled in this episode to represent the language of the shepherds on the outside of the city.
Sound effects (mostly) from Freesound.org, including "weak clapping" by FreqMan, "Running" by Juandamb, "Woman in Pain by Coral_Island_Studios, "10 Slap_real" by stereostereo, "Filing coarse Hand Aluminum Panel" by markpSFX, "trowel, mixing mortar" by be_a_hero_not_a_patriot, "big crowd chatter" by Kyster, "Wood Carving Off Mic" benboncan, "Avoncroft Blacksmith" by phonoflora, "herd of cows, mooing", by Martin Sadoux, "Cow Scream" by gibarroule, "Cow2" by genghisattenborough, "Sheep bleating" by zachrau, "Chickens" by Dann93, "Marche ext. Soissons..." by loillieux, "market trader NL 02 1603..." by klankbeeld, "VillageLaughter1" by acclivity", "Dolen village July morning..." by mihal40, "Italian village no traffic" by squidge316, "Market Cerdanyola" by bitlab_coop, "Street Market 2" by Stevious42, "fishermen shouts India" by kyles, "Fishing boats in harbour" by Satoration, "Cows Birds Spring' by 4barrelcarb, "Highflow River" by Cagan Celik, "River Teign and birds..." by Philip Goddard, "Walking on stone" by tigersound, "Footsteps" by TheSoundcatcher, "G52-05 Ox Cart" by craigsmith, "Canarian whistled language" by FonotecadeCanarias, and "cicade at nighttime" by Eelke.

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About a mile and a half into the trail and Sapphire and I had reached two points of agreement: there was no sun here, and the place we were standing was definitely overlooking the edge of a steep white hillside, that extended downwards into a huge festering darkness. Down to the exact degree to which the darkness festered, we agreed on at least those details, which was a miracle, considering neither of us could reach an agreement on any of the other basic physical features of the place, like if the path had been going uphill or downhill since we started walking. A minor puzzle relative to the previous quandary of becoming a cloud, but still perplexing.

The two of us remained divided on the subject of the bird as well, and the topic seemed to hang over every break in conversation, even if I hadn’t brought it up since we started walking. Nothing I’d said had genuinely eased Sapphires guilt about what she’d done. I knew it needed to happen, but neither wanted nor could explain why to her, not fully. After all, I could only guess how true the words it said to me were. I didn’t want to say anything to her if it’d just freak her out. Whatever the truth was, I just hoped that she could find some peace.

But like I was saying. Despite our general agreement about the hillside, we still differed as to whether or not something was moving inside of the festering darkness at the bottom. Was it a creature in the darkness? Or was it the darkness itself? What did it mean? This is just the kind of idle conversation you have when you’re high on acid in a decomposing psychic hexateron. The conversation wasn’t just chatter, it was strategy. It was born out of a fight for survival, to look for meaning or order or patterns or anything coherent about the world around us. Anything that crossed our minds could hold the key to figuring it all out. It felt like Sapphire and I were both at least asking the same questions, which I hoped was leading us in the right direction. What do you think the darkness means? Huh. What about these mountains? Mountains exist, right? Geologists study mountains, don’t they? What got you into geology?

“...through the rock guide and seeing all the different rocks, where they came from in nature, then down at the info box—you see what that rock’s personality is like, where it came from, what kind of things it’s been through to get to where it is, and they’re almost like characters in a movie.”
“Right. Huh. I’d never thought of that.”

We sat for a moment, breaking into silence for the first time in what must have been an hour or so of conversation on the subject of festering darkness and the absence of true night here in this bizarre world. The silence grew great enough that I could barely perceive a faint metallic squeaking in the distance. I jumped up. “What is it?”
“Wait, listen...there it is again!”
“What do you think it is? It almost sounds like a...a mouse?”
“Maybe. Uh...no. It’s happening too regularly.”
“Let me see...”, Sapphire climbed further up the hill to look out around us, “Hey! It’s...it’s a cart!”
John: “A cart?”
Sapphire: “Yeah! It’s being pulled by an ox. Come look! There! Do you see him?”
John: “That’s...I wonder who that is. I can’t see his face behind his hat. And look. His ox...”
Sapphire: “I know, right, it’s so...”
John: “So...”
Sapphire: “Normal.”
John: “Yes. That’s exactly what an ox would look like in real life.”
Sapphire: “I know, that’s what I was just thinking.”
John: “Sorry, I thought you already said it.”
Sapphire: “I did. I think. Uh...What do we do?”
John: “We could wait for him to get to us, then maybe we can ask a few questions. Or...well if we keep walking he might never see us. He’s probably a while off.”
Sapphire: “What’s he got in the cart, can you see?”
John: “Something under a blanket. Not sure.”
Sapphire: “Um, he doesn’t look armed, right? I don’t see any weapons on him.”
John: “No. Maybe we should ask where this road leads to.”

“Sure, and maybe he can tell us where the fuck we are.” Sapphire grabbed me by the shirt sleeve of my arm and pulled me back down the trail.  “Hey you! Guy! Speak English? Got a minute?”, she waved her left hand. I walked right next to her, looking down the steep hill into the festering darkness. The man lifted his head for a moment, and I could see his face—weathered, brown, wrinkled—his skin drooped with age, making his features grave and unmoving beneath his baggy straw hat as he munched on a thick wad of grass out the side of his mouth. Blood stained the sides of his lips, and his hands. “Yeah! Over here! [she turns to John] Come on. I don’t think he sees us.”

I followed her as her pace quickened. The old man’s eyes grew wider as he saw her come near—he pulled on the ox and muttered something to it to make it stop. To his right side, I saw him reach for a knife, thinking we might be highwaymen out to rob him. “Hey man, nice ox. It’s real, like, normal. Do you know where we are?”. The man looked back and forth between us both, frowning, his hand gripping tighter around the knife. Why would we ask such a thing? Why would someone travel along a road like this and not know where they were? It was the only road for a hundred miles east and west, leading only to one place at the edge of the world, drawing only pilgrims and the occasional trader seeking exotic goods for the market. There were monsters here, horrible fanged serpents that spat venom, enormous tigers that lurked in plain sight stalking those foolish enough to stray from the road. The two travelers dressed in strange, foreign fabrics. Their skin looked near translucent, their faces pale white like someone starved of air, an almost inexplicable, sickly color. The woman in particular. The old man could see tight bruises around her neck, a bloodstain in her left eye, blood underneath her fingernails.

“Please…can you understand what I’m saying? Comprende? Hey…sprechen-zie english?”
        Sapphire’s mysterious alien words frightened him. Was she trying to cast a spell? Was she a witch?
John: “Don’t be afraid.”
Prophet: (snarl) “Who are you?”
John: “Uh…my name’s John. This is Sapphire. We just wanted to know where this road leads. Uh…we found it by accident.
Prophet: “Where did the two of come from, hmmm?”
John: “Uhh…how do I explain it?”
Sapphire: “Uh…down the ways to the end of this road there’s a house, right? You know the place?”
Prophet: “Know of the place, yes...but only from afar. Only a fool would venture so far into the doldrums.”
Sapphire: “Well...like. It’s not about the destination man, it’s about the journey, right? Right. You know what I’m talking about. What about you, uh, where did you come from?”
Prophet: “Oi.”
John and Sapphire together: “What?”
Prophet: “Oi! [Pauses, disbelieving. He restates to clarify, in case they didn’t understand him] The city of Oi. [Cynically amused. He had always believed Oi’s fame was widespread and had never contemplated the fact that it’s name would sound alien to other people] You mean you haven’t heard of Oi?”
Sapphire: “That’s its name? Just, ‘oi?’”
Prophet: “Well, that’s what I said! Oi. A city of peace, light, goodwill.”
S: “Really gets right to the point, man, I dig it. Oi. Oi!”
J: “Oi.”
P: “Oi! A city’s name does not need to mangle the tongue.”
J: The two of us, he decided, must have been lost travelers, from some far away place, and we no doubt misunderstood his question.
P: “You two must have traveled from very far away to have not heard of Oi. Far and wide it is among the most renowned kingdoms in the world. Tell me, what is the purpose of your voyage?”
J: “We’re from..
S: “from the kingdom of…of…”
J: “2017.”
S: “What? Yeah. 2017 Idols. It’s very…very…”
J: “Rich. It’s a very rich kingdom.”
S: “Very Rich. We’re thinking of adding more idols. But then we’d have to change the name. And then you have to redo all the signs and reprint all the money...Know what I’m saying? It’d be a real bummer.”


J: “Yeah. Can’t have too many idols, you know. And...uh...we are charting the unknown reaches of the earth, looking for other cities with which we might trade.”
S: “Right! And we were blown off course.”
J: “Right. Blown off course in our…our enchanted…”
S: “Sailboat. An enchanted flying sailboat.”
J: “You can’t see it now because…”
S: (in unison) “It crashed.” J: “It’s invisible.”
J: “Right. It crashed because its invisible, which makes it hard to drive.”
S: “Live and learn, am I right?”
J: “Right”
The old man nodded, supposing that we were searching for some kind of idiom from the Kingdom of 2017 Idols in a tongue which we did not speak correctly.
P: “I see.”
S: “What about you? What are you doing out here?”
P: “A dream called me into the wilderness. I saw a hunter wound a catamount with a shot from his bow, but then the beast slew him. There is a place not far from here where grass breaks through the doldrum, and there it is that a woodsman planted the seed of a yew tree in a time before the forest melted into the endless white, in a time no one remembers—in the tree lives Amatep’Oi, the god of hunters, wanderers, and provider of shelter. I spent seven days and seven nights in the shadow of the yew, eating no food, drinking only the water given to me by the tree, waiting for Amatep to reveal the reason for his call.

        On the eve of the seventh night, as I held my mouth up to the sky in parched agony longing for water, I saw Amatep in a cloud of red mist, and, though the world for the entire time remained windless and dead, the tree shivered as though a storm had caught its branches. The catamount, said Amatep, was a plague which would befall our cattle and later befall our citizens. Oi, he said, was the hunter—he said for me to warn the people that when they killed the sickfallen cattle, they must not eat them, but burn their flesh in a place far from the city. It is this message which I must bring to the people. As I returned to where I had tethered my oxen, I took one up the hill, where I could slay it with my knife and share a drink and a meal with Amatep in thanksgiving.

        As I returned home, I saw a terrible omen. A huge ghost bird, colored white and red and black, cut a slow path over the sky, heading to the edge of the doldrums. I saw it in the distance. Perching on the house of which you spoke. But when I returned to the road, I saw it’s bones lying scattered off in the distance…”

S: “A bird…I think that…I think I saw that bird.”
P: “Did you now?”
S: “I…it tried to bite John, so I….I killed it”
J: The eyes of the wandering prophet grew wide, and he reflexively took a step back, jolted by her claim.
P: “You…you killed the ghost bird?”
S: “Y…yes…I grabbed it by the legs…and I…I spun it around until I’d snapped its neck”
J: Suddenly, the disheveled face of the woman now made sense. She had come face to face with, killed, and skinned bare the ghost bird. With her hands alone. What tremendous force she must have had to do such a thing. What incredible power, bravery, resolve. He realized the gravity of his mistake. She was a foreign prophet—certainly a powerful and fearsome one at that. He thought of...he thought of a temple. I couldn’t quite understand why. No words came to his mind. Only the image. An idol he plucked from a river. His chest filled with a mixture of terror and ecstasy, and he prostrated himself on the ground.
P: “Oh, Sapphire’oi. Please have mercy on me if I seemed rude, understand that I did not realize what you were, that I had not known your name or your power till now.”
S: “It’s…uh. It’s fine. Yeah. You’re…uh. Uh, John…?”
J: “He thinks you’re a demigod. Or a some kind of foreign prophet, I guess. Something like that.”
S: “Uh…what should I do?”
J: “Just…uh…go with the flow, I guess?”
S: “Right, yeah. You really uh, angered me, and stuff, man, that wasn’t cool. But uh, like, you can stop bowing, we’re fine now. You wanna just uh…show us the way to Oi?”
P: “Of course Sapphire, prophet of the 2017 idols. Yes. And this…this must be your servant. What is he called?”
S: “My servant. Yeah. His name his John.”
J: “Oh, okay. So I’m your servant now. Cool.”
S: “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, man, I’m just going with the flow.”
       

J: We walked for two more hours, winding through canyons and mountains and strange alpine meadows. The sound of a river emanated from far away, at first barely a whisper. As we neared the sound, a faint green grass consumed the austere white and blue wilderness. The closer we grew to the city, the scarcer the tiny patches of rusted and warped graph paper became. Oxen, huge and bulky creatures with long horns, waited on the outskirts in fields that stretched for miles. Shepherds smoked pipes atop tall chairs with high ladders—as we passed, they would look down their noses at us, fearful and submissive eyes half sheltered by baggy straw hats not unlike the one worn by the prophet. Some of them whistled to each other to relay coded messages, blending with the sounds of birds perched in alien looking trees and the barks of cattle dogs with ragged, wolf like hair.

        As we grew nearer, we saw a city filled with tan houses shaped like overturned pots. The quaint, almost Seussical city perched beside the crook of a huge river so big it could have been a small sea. From the rooves of each house sprouted curved chimneys. Their round windows, ornamented with crisscrossing bones, all opened to the humid, warm air outside, and let a cooling, peaceful breeze waft through the rooms. Each house had a triangular opening that served as a entryway. In place of a door, a semicircle of jewels over each entrance indicated the status and the roles of the people with the right to go inside. The streets of the city, cobbled from sandstone and lined with neat mica sidewalks, heaved sporadically through the mess of round clay buildings, and ended haphazardly at the city’s edges, giving way to rows of plain brick and wood houses. People hawking snacks, trinkets, gods, drinks, curses, feathers, magic items, animals, herbs, baskets, tools, weapons, and garments made of fresh leather lined the streets, bellowing out their wares in a constant battle to be heard. In between them weaved sagely women engaged in conversation, circles of adolescents playing flutes and drums, old men telling stories to younger men and debating with them the meaning of the prophet’s dream of the catamount.

But before we could reach this city, we passed through the houses of brick and wood, where the smell of leather tanning in the heat of the open, sunless air mingled with the sound of hammers pounding against hot metal. In the fronts of the houses, women carved idols, weaved baskets, and baked snacks in their yards that spilled into the road on which we walked. Our presence in the neighborhood of brick and wood brought a solemn, mystified silence. A child reached out to touch Sapphire’s hair, and the prophet hit him with the back of his hand, making the boy cry out and run back to his mother. Sapphire winced. The prophet looked back at her and apologized,
P: “I am sorry. This is the only way into the city.”
J: Taking advantage of our momentary pause, a crowd gathered around us, keeping cautious distance as they speculated about what the prophet had learned in the wilderness, and who he had brought back with him. Eventually, the crowd grew so massive that the prophet could hardly move, and he, begrudgingly, helped us up onto the top of the wagon. A hush fell over the mass of people.
P: “I return from the edge of the world with news, dear people of Oi—not only words from the great god of the hunter, but a great hero, the child of spirits, who ventured beyond the doldrums, and slayed a ghost bird with her own two hands. A foreign prophet like the one I have foretold. She walks among you today—know her, and fear her, for she has great power. You who work in the inferior trades, you sculptors, metal workers, tanners, those who work with clay and with stone, with wood and with filth, do not let your hands soil her.”
S: [Hushed aside to the prophet] “Uh—actually—do you mind if I say something?”
P: “Surely. Please, forgive me.”
S: [Clears throat, speaks up so that the folks hear her] “Yeah, hi! Uh, so…uh. Thanks man for saying all that nice shit, but you guys don’t really need to freak out or anything. Alright? Like, it’s okay if poor people…uh…touch me, man, that’s really fucked up.”
P: “I—I did not realize. Perhaps I misspoke…”
S: “Yeah, like, it’s cool, but uh…like, if I’m being honest, you’re being kind of a dick. You want to apologize to that kid?
[The kid looks up, realizing Sapphire is talking about him]
Yeah, you.

[His mom and he share a nervous glance]
Yeah, come here.
[Sapphire gets down from the wagon and approaches him. She sounds very compassionate and motherly towards him]
Are you doing okay? Yeah? No, don’t be scared. Hey…I’m sorry that dude hit you. Yeah he’s scary right.  Here…bring it here. Peace and love man.

[Thinking that she might be able to rewrite the course of human history by introducing them to these concepts, she shouts this to the crowd, sort of hoping to start a revolution]

Peace and love. You got it, guys?”
Crowd: “Peace and love”
S: [The crowd shouting along with her is giving her energy and making her feel more confident]

 “And don’t let prophets shit on your art, okay?

[She suddenly feels awkward to be challenging the prophet in front of the people and gets self-conscious]
I mean, this guy’s a pretty cool guy, I’m not like hating on him or anything, he’s got some really important shit to tell people, right? Guess he made a sacrifice to Imhotep.the hunter God. He’s cool. We’re cool. It’s all cool.

[Trying to get herself back on track]

But yeah, just to kind of riff off of what he said, uh, my name’s Sapphire. Like, uh, this guy said, I’m a demigod. Killed a ghost bird. Uh. My servant John and I came from a faraway kingdom called the Kingdom of the 2017 Idols, it’s…

[she wants to say something cool]

...got lots of idols. And I’m here to tell you uh…Tell you about peace and love, alright? Right. Peace and love. That’s like, the most important thing for people to understand, right? Like even in the Kingdom of 2017 Idols, they don’t have that figured out, but like...if you can figure that out, you’re basically gonna be set. Peace is like, everyone should come together, don’t fight each other, don’t go invading fucking Vietnam cause you think you’re the world’s police or whatever, like, just chill out, go with the flow, be cool, okay? And then love, like, that’s kind of like peace, but like, I mean, no, it’s kind of different. Uh, what do I mean? Just don’t act like you’re better than anybody, cause we’re all basically just the same deep down. Even if you’re a prophet. Okay? Does that make sense?

[She is feeling like Jesus but trying not to be too full of herself. She decides to be nice to someone to set an example]

Like, come here, dude. Yeah, you. With that groovy cow sculpture.

[He presents her with the groovy cow sculture. It’s groovy]

Is this an idol or some shit man?

[Yes, it is]

Right on. So I guess you pray to this?

[Yep]

Yeah?

[Sure do…]

 Cool. It’s really far out, man.

[She hugs him]

And look, see, I’m hugging this guy, right? It’s no sweat. No sweat!

[She is now walking through the crowd with her hands up feeling like a baller]

Oh! Sorry, did I bump into you?

[She did. The person is now inspecting her skin]

Don’t freak out. Oh, my shirt? Yeah, uh…. it’s a demigod thing. Uh.

[She turns away to look for something else to Jesus about, eventually noticing a basket]

This thing too, hey John! Look at this basket.

[To the basket maker]

I really like this. What’s your name?

[Gebbadali]

Can I call you Ali? Okay. Yeah, this is a really nice basket... I don’t know if we’re in Babylonian times or something and I’m like changing human history, but this is a nice basket. It’s gonna be in a museum someday.

[He doesn’t know what a museum is]

A museum is like a place where we put cool shit like this basket in the future, or that cow, or those pots! No...not yours...his...yours are really cool too... Alright, man, I’m done.”

J: A few meager, bewildered claps came from the audience. The prophet avoided looking at her, seeming sorrowful.

P: “My lord, I hope you understand, I did not strike the child out of malice, only to teach it respect.”

S: “Yeah, I know, sorry if that came off a little harsh... I just felt like it was a good time to, kinda like…speak my mind, I guess. See ya guys! Bye! Peace and love!”

P: “Peace and love…”