Aur Child

Alai refused the bowl of gazpacho his wife offered him that evening.

“Maybe later,” he mumbled, and stepped out onto the patio to sit and watch the waves tumble gaily on the beach. She followed him out and brushed up against him, pushing her fingers through the thick curls on his head.

“Shall we walk along the shore after dinner?” she asked. Her broad smile, eyes peering hopefully for a clue to his angst, spoke more than her words and tripped his consternation. No other could reach him that way. She understood his meditations. She respected them. Yet she seemed to know that he must not be allowed to wallow too long in dreary thoughts. She had come up to him and set that bridge down between them with the exquisite authority of a selfless partner. She only reached for his hand, yet she lifted his spirit. Reluctant as he was to push his own thoughts aside, he knew she was taking care of him when he could not. Of that, he was grateful.

“You’ve been terribly quiet lately, bear. What’s troubling you?”

He looked into her eyes and hesitated. His mouth twitched as he wondered how to share his concerns without sounding selfish.

“It’s always the same old trouble, bee,” he said. “I want to do more but here … we just can’t.”

“Here?” She said, sliding her hand down his arm and taking his hand again. “Where else would we go?”

“I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that I wish everyone wasn’t always so … afraid.”

She nodded her head. “They believe that sticking with what’s worked is what keeps us safe.” She looked out onto the sea with a small frown. Alai thought she might even be holding back tears. Then, she continued. “It was no different in my village. Of course, it was sad to leave my clan and know I might only see my parents, Elder Charre, well… all of them, only occasionally.” He felt her squeeze his fingers.

“And even though the biggest thrill was to be with you, to contribute to the village and to start our own family, I had also always dreamed back then that the dullness, the repetitiveness of it all was just something odd about my people, my village.”

She returned her gaze to Alai. Within the frame of those deep, dark eyes he saw the glow of a thousand full moons. That celestial brilliance crept across her face into a smile, and she reached up and ran the back of her fingers across his cheek.

“I had hoped when I came here to throw all that off. And, at first, it was all new and exciting, and the villagers accepted me so warmly and, of course, just to be at Hill Village was such a thrill. Those big ships would come and bring stories and goods to trade, and Elder Tiul made me feel like I had always been part of her clan. Even the texts were different here. Sure, the main psalms are the same, but reading from Our Order was no less exciting than anything else in those early years. I don’t know, there was something fresh in the way the elders here wrote their sermons. I remember thinking that their words seemed to be influenced by all those merchant traders and all those perspectives. I believed I had found a place where people looked outwards, not inwards all the time. And it kind of made sense to me that you were the way you were: inquisitive, adventurous, unafraid.

“Then I started to realize that what made things work here was really no different than back home. They might change the words but the message behind it all remained constant. Safety, comfort, predictability. Alai, I adore your curiosity, and I don’t care if it stirs things up once in a while, and if it means that we’re put out here with Bemko and I don’t have to listen to all the gossip about villagers I didn’t grow up with every time I go into the village, then I can live with that. But we’re not gonna change them. The rules, the limitations, all of it. That’s what they do to keep us safe. Can you blame them for that when we’ve always had all that we needed?” He felt her squeeze his hand again. “Your curiosity scares them, Alai. It’s not bad but it scares them. It forces them to make choices they’re not prepared to make.”

Alai let out a little laugh.

“Well, they’re not the only ones having trouble making choices,” he said.

She pursed her lips and squinted into a tiny smirk.

“Well, whatever it is you’re fooling with in that shed, it’s really setting off the chatterheads,” she said. “You’d make a lot of people happier if you picked up a different toy. But the choice is easy. What’s best for you and for us? Isn’t there any common ground to be found there?” She pushed him tenderly and he broke into a smile.

He watched her return to the boy inside the cottage. She hadn’t bothered to protest his lack of interest in eating. She placed the cover on the clay pot of soup and set it in the coolbox.

After they ate, she managed to catch his attention by another caress on his cheek with her fingers.

“Come on, now. Let’s get our toes wet.”

The family of four strolled the beach in the evening dusk with a pace that balanced the heat of the parched sand against the deep coolness of the purpling sky. Alai yearned for the soft landside breeze to usher in the quiet night when he could think best. Wife beside him, hand in hand, son poking a toe into the oatmeal sand still soaked from a receding wave, their pants weighed down by the calm sloshing against their ankles. In the dunes, the dog rustled through patches of thick grasses with a sandy muzzle, exploding out of the scratchy stalks in bursts of wanton excitement. The conversation was one-sided and hushed. He heard her talking about the plight of flowers on the shady side of their home, and something about the length of the boy’s hair. Though ostensibly disengaged, from time to time, he looked up at her eyes, her lips, her fingers pushing away a splash of sea foam from her trousers, and added those images to the collection of cherished moments that filled his head.

The four of them carried on this way indiscriminately until the dunes grew into dark forms before dark hills below dark heavens. A rush of breeze spilled over them, peeking through the dunes, smelling of the pines in the forest, pulling excess heat from their skin, raising hairs on their arms. The boy snarled and spit on blobs of beached jellyfish; the wife appeared contemplative between intermittent thoughts spoken out loud from beneath wayward strands of curly, black hair that flapped like a weathered banner when the angle of the wind was just right.

For all my longings of discovery, he thought, for every inkling to experiment and explore, for each urge to learn more, this feeling of contentment can be eerily overwhelming.

The gift of a contemplative mind has its joys, a boundless inner universe of intrigues, inspirations, and unaided diversion, yet it also has its flaws. From the outside, it can be mistaken as being distant, aloof, even unloving. But in his quiet way, even in his most inward moments, Alai always noticed them. He always thought about them. At its core, no matter how indirectly related, every urge and desire he had was always first to serve them, to help them, to make their lives better, to raise them up beyond what he had known. These were his intentions, regardless of his moments of silence or introspection, even distracted indifference. In a word, he cherished them. The contours of his wife’s cheekbones when the fading sunlight beside her reflected off her dark skin and caused that special silhouette. Her soft-spoken words and whispering movements around the house. The way the boy ran between them and brushed his sandy hands along their hips just to momentarily reaffirm that powerful bond of presence. The thrill in his eyes, nothing more consequential in his world, when he skipped over to share an idea or anecdote with them.

More than an acknowledgment of the blessings he enjoyed, he challenged himself. Why should I ever yearn for anything more than this?

Eventually, the impulse to speak was muted by the wafting sea smells. He found himself back at the cottage. The field of dune grasses to the south was alive with singing insects. The boy rebuked bedtime with reddened eyes and sagging posture. He stomped about in the displays of temper that overcome children whose daily portion of energy has been fully exploited. The dog rested her chin on her paws in the corner, occasionally lifting an eyelid to judge the boy’s position in relation to her tail. Alai mindlessly helped his wife tidy up throughout the gathering quiet of the boy’s eventual capitulation. Without a word, but not before a tender kiss was placed upon his head, she made her way to bed as a matter of practice, leaving Alai alone again with his thoughts. A blissful, comforting routine in a confident partnership.

Later that night, Alai emerged from his brooding to find himself once again alone with his own thoughts in the blinking starlight. He sat on the back patio in a comfortable, grass-woven sling chair, the combination of cool sea breezes and soft warm air better than any blanket. He looked up to the sky. The first quarter moon had already set; a time to reference intuitions and make actionable plans.

He often sat there thinking to himself, building arguments in some personal rhetoric of ideas that hardly ever got formed into actual words or sentences. Hardly ever shared with anyone else. He thought about things that would not, simply could not, ever be spoken to anyone. The frustration he felt from Gallia-Tiul and his neighbor’s well-meaning lecture earlier that day was still fresh in his mind.

He floated there, attempting to find the right answer, struggling to make sense, building his next soliloquy.

They tell us, “Meddle not with what we do not understand.” Safe, but dull.

To the north, he could see the occulting lights atop the wind towers. Each one scattered along coastlines throughout the world was blinking right now, their individual colors, combinations, and frequency allowing mariners to draw accurate bearings and hold courses to the villages that prospered at their foundations. His humanity had done that, he thought, sometime long ago.

I have been ever elevated by the words of my fellow villagers yet seek to step further off the ground; may gravity perhaps ignore me for some short time. If the time came when all who have known me would see my actions and hear my words as they were intended, when they would have the patience to consider my true intent, I am certain that the relentless inclination to go beyond worldly habits would ring as clear to them as it does to me. What would it be like to expand upon the brilliance of our forefathers? What would come of merging that which is trusted with that which might be tried? Why must we always tamp that urge down? Or am I alone in my passions? Do I suffer from some malady? Do so few others suffer by it that when they look at me, they see an anomaly? Am I wrong in this simply because all others think it so?

He stood up and stepped to the edge of the patio, listening to the crash of waves and the hush of the breeze. The lights of the village, some candle, some solid-state, flickered on the hill. He slipped his hands into his pockets.

Alas, it is the uncertain outcome of any innovation that is feared by our villages. It has been, and fairly so, trained into us to question, and at the same time throttle, those who threaten to disrupt the stability of what we know to be safe; to cultivate only what brings us comfort and contentment. Most of us, anyway. Catastrophe is well explained to be the usual, proven fate of those who ever strive for more. It is the burning, ungrateful emotion of dissatisfaction that is taught to us as a sin. To yearn for more is shameful; it belies a kind of contempt for present company and all the gifts we enjoy. To suggest that more is better reveals the folly of seeking to fill an infinite cup. To desire a change is selfish; “When has the village done so wrong to betray you that you seek for something more?” they’ll ask. There is nothing that comes from this village life that denies or deprives its residents. Health, comfort, safety, and camaraderie are all here to be relished. “One’s shadow can either be greeted or chased.”

He turned to go inside. With a final glimpse, he took in the night. The beach, the dunes, the hills, the lights, the towers, the sea, the stars.

And so, I exist not without some discomforts on the periphery of the village, yet I am still welcomed and included in the wealth of a reliable sustenance. In no verbose way, I sheepishly desire to know more about our world and our purpose than merely relish the truths of our successful happenstance. It is admittedly laughable and rightfully shunned; self-admission is nonetheless an intimate achievement. Ho! What step shall I take?

In all his meditations, a clear dichotomy had formed in his mind. Stay or go. Accept the limits set by the elders or take his family – and the Aur child – and go elsewhere. Those were the only options he could imagine. But even they were not comparable. Would he steal from those who have cared for him his whole life? Would he embark upon – and subject his family to – a life on the run? Even if it meant his own needs were better met, would he risk those of his wife and son? No. He would not. It shall be returned.

It was the early hours of the morning. Alai wobbled with drowsiness. He knew he should sleep. He pushed aside the heavy curtain that partitioned the two sleeping quarters in the cottage. As usual, the boy had crept into their bed. So peacefully they sleep there, he observed. So still!