In the dim, fractionated light of the sunrise, the fourth world was visible.
It was often she found herself outdoors as the darkness faded, as black and the glitter of other places seeped away, her ability to watch them slowly absorbed by the coming fireball and blue tinged ceiling overhead. Night after night, season after season, she gravitated to the small patch of weeds outdoors, unable to fight the body’s urge for the night air, for the cool breeze which would come in from the ocean, usually full of moisture and the scent of deep amphibian life and the waxy plants that lived in salt water. She could not resist keeping her mouth open, tasting the elements that had traveled far, changing their form to accommodate new modes of travel, mutating from water to air.
The night was delicious, alive with life unseen to the mass of sleepers. There was something about the pattern of the moon crawlers, carried out undercover, with only a sliver of light and stars. The shadows calmed her, they hid the vulgarity of her movements, muted the body so only the most obvious of forms was apparent, though there was no one to hide from, no one was there, no one was watching.
She swung alone in the hammock strung between two rusted poles, each of which were buried deep in the earth and surrounded by patches of clover and a few sparse clumps of struggling small-faced violets which released their perfume with sensual abandon.
The night was her time to rest, not as most people did, warm in their beds, tucked into the rooms of four walls and closed doors. But she did not sleep so much as sink into a trance. She never lost consciousness. As time moved, flowers opened and closed, she was aware of herself and the sensations upon her arms as the planet shifted and dawn approached, the bitterness of moonlit breezes, the nocturnal insects which sometimes landed on her cheeks and hands. The trance drew her awareness to the gentle swing of the ratty hammock, the cocoon like swath of the nylon mesh as it hugged her body, rocking her like a mother’s arms.
She was out there, wild. The night not hers, but she was the night, her presence affecting it as all attention does. The darkness was the companion who had no words of love, no scolding, it was presence and presence only. It was movement, contact flow- neither caring for her or in any way disapproving. It moved with her or without. And in her trances, she felt it all. The path of the moonlight as it traveled over and by, the birds, the waves so far in the distance that they became just a whisper.
