Two

His feet were aching. It’s probably the boots, he thought. He looked down. There was nothing. He was sure that there had been ground there a moment before, but now it seemed that he was standing on the edge of a cliff. His first instinct was to back away, for he was afraid of heights, but his feet didn’t move. It’s them damn boots, he thought. He looked down. The dark water was dotted with ripples, as though many stones had been skipped at once, leaving a path of disturbance in their wake. He watched the rings of ripples appear out of nothing and then widen and disappear back into nothing. He suddenly had the urge to dive into the water, and he would have, until he remembered that he was still wearing his boots. They would just pull him down. Fear began to spread from his heart, creeping through his veins, and congealing in the pit of his stomach. He did not, did not, want to fall. He turned, but his boots stayed. He turned in the other direction, and this time his boots let him go. He stumbled forward, his hands splayed on the grass. He noticed that the tips of his fingers were blurry, as though they were beginning to fade and blend into his surroundings. He had no time to examine them however, for he could feel the earth beginning to crumble beneath his heels. He ran. He was running on grass, but there was nothing in sight. The sky above him was gray, bland. He ran.

      She was barefoot. Small pebbles kept lodging themselves in the soles of her feet, burrowing into the skin, but not breaking it. She would pause while walking, and lift one foot up, brushing the small rocks back onto the ground. She would do the same with the other foot, and then continue. If there were sand on the beach, she would have walked on it. But there were only pebbles and rocks. Waves crashed to her left, and to her right, there was nothing. She scanned the ground as she walked, looking for shells. She already had two, one was small, round, and white, worn smooth by the salt of the sea. The other was conical in shape, and had once housed a horseshoe crab, but was now empty. They rested on her palm which she kept flat and still. Once, she stopped. She looked back, and behind her, sand stretched as far as she could see. But when she turned back around, she only saw rocks and pebbles.

He had slowed from a run to a walk, and he could feel blisters forming on his heels. He stopped, and looked around. He saw something to his right, a shape in the distance. He began to walk towards it, tightening his jaw with each step, attempting to ignore the pain in his heels. The grass had changed color, and was no longer a deep green, but a sandy brown, and now stood about waist high, whereas before it had been cropped low. Looking down, he saw nothing below his waist but grass, and he felt as though he were being swallowed whole by the tawny mass. He knew his feet were moving, because his heels still burned, but he felt oddly unattached from his legs. Looking up, he saw that he was much closer to the shape, which he now saw to be a tree.

She was tired of walking. She turned, and waded into the welcoming water. The waves splashed against her shins, and then her waist, and then her chest, and then her shoulders.  She opened her clenched palm, and let the shells sink slowly back into the sea. She allowed the next wave to crash over her head, the roar of the water pushing her down, down, and then suddenly, a release, and she found herself breathing air. She began to swim slowly in no particular direction, thinking about nothing, just moving. She saw something in the distance. At first it was just a dark mass, but it soon developed the form of a child. She could see a head, arms, legs, hair floating in the waves. A voice inside her head said, don’t swim closer, but it was just a child, and so she altered her course. Now, the waves were still, and the world was silent. She was almost there. She could see the hair floating gently, thick and dull. She reached the child, but it was only a piece of driftwood. What she had thought was hair was an old fishing net driven into the wood with a homemade peg. She felt relieved, and tired. She rested her arms on the wood, and rested her head on her arms, and the waves hummed, and she closed her eyes.

He stood looking at the tree. It was silhouetted against the now pink sky, its leaves glowing gold. The trunk was almost black, a dark line next to the brightness of the treetop and the pastel of the sky. He wanted to go closer, but his boots wouldn’t move. So he sat. The grass had receded by now to the length of his pinky finger, and the blades were soft against his skin. He leaned back on his hands, and looked up.

She was awake, and she was no longer in the ocean. At least, the ocean no longer consisted of water, but grass. She looked around from where she sat, but the driftwood and the net were gone. Sandy grass extended to the horizon, with no hills or mountains in sight. A shape, however, had suddenly appeared in the distance. She began to walk toward the shape, the grass soft beneath her bare feet. Soon, she stood within the shadow of the tree, the sky pink, the leaves golden, and the trunk black. She looked at it for a moment, and then moved closer, until she stood close enough to the trunk that if she had wanted to, she could have reached out a hand and touched the rough bark. She stood, reading - reading the words that were painted in black all over the trunk, scrawled in thousands of different languages and hands, cramped close, but never overlapping.  Many of the words were just names, as though their authors had just wanted to leave proof of their own existence. Some had written full sentences or phrases. As she was reading, she came upon a carving that caught her eye. A simple circle had been drawn into the trunk of the tree, but it had been done so smoothly, and so symmetrically, that she was impressed. They must have been steady handed, she thought. She traced the outline of the circle with her finger, passing over the same spots over and over again.

His boots had relented, and now he stood beneath the tree. He saw that the tree was covered in words, but he couldn’t read, so he looked up. Among and around the branches of the tree, golden moths hung, as though suspended on invisible wires, swaying gently in a breeze that did not exist. From afar, he had thought that the tree simply had golden leaves, but now he understood that they were in fact moths, glowing as though they were lanterns lit by an internal flame. He was watching the bugs float idly above him, when he heard a noise nearby. He looked to his left, and saw a girl standing there, looking at him.

They’re moths, he said.

She looked up. I didn’t even notice, she said.

He looked up. They both stood, staring at the halo of wings surrounding the top of the tree.

She looked down. Nice boots, she said.

He looked down. Where are you shoes?

I don’t have any.

Yeah, I wish I didn’t have any.

Why?

These boots hurt my feet.

She looked at the boots, then at his face.

Can I have them?

Then what’ll I wear, he said.

Nothing, she said.

He looked at her.

These boots do hurt, he thought.

Alright, he said.

She smiled.

He reached down, and pulled off his right boot, and placed it on the ground next to him. He wasn’t wearing socks, and his heel was raw and red from blisters. He put his foot on the ground, and pressed with his toes, feeling the grass and the soil beneath. He pulled off his other boot, and threw it next to its mate. He wiggled his toes. He felt like a pressure had just been released from his lungs, allowing him to breathe again.

Feel better?

Yep, he said.

She walked over, and picked up the boots, and put them on.

They fit, she said.

Good, he said.

She looked at him. She stepped closer, and lifted her hand in an awkward sort of salute, and then dropped it back to her side. He held out his right hand, and she held out hers, but when she tried to touch his palm, his fingers, she felt nothing, as though her hand had passed through air. Strange, she thought. He looked down at his fingers with the blurred edges. When he looked up, the tree, the girl, the moths, the boots, were gone.

Ears

            I have detachable ears. I can take them off and put them on as I please. I keep them in a box when I’m not wearing them, I call it my Ear-Box, which is not very original, but it makes sense. I’m not a very original person in general. I’m pretty average actually. Average weight, average build, average face, average brain – just an average guy. Really the only thing that makes me unique is my ears. Although, who knows, there could be other people out there with detachable ears. But I don’t think so.

I don’t bother trying to hide the place where my ears should be when they’re not there. Nobody seems to have noticed that where there should be ears, there’s just skin.

            When I was little I read all the classic superhero comics—Spiderman, Superman, Batman, etc. The first time I noticed that my ears were detachable, I felt like one of those superheroes, realizing their power. The only difference is, my ears can’t help me save the world; they just help me ignore it.