Home
Start a new game
Explore games
Help
Log in or sign up
Log in
Username
Password (
Forgot it?
)
×
New to Playfic?
Full Name
Email
Username
Password
Password (confirm)
Are you sure about this?
a meadow
by
john
Played 2,118 times
View game source
(spoilers!)
Download the
.z8 file
Source Code
the meadow is a room. "and a meadow sprawls out before you. little lilacs and a deer running in the distance. see the way the grass waves, like sheets drying deeply in the sun. notice the gentle leaves, now drifting in the wind. in the morning you'll see a sun rise, a different one each dawn. and in the night, each time, a moon will rise. it comes in different colors, sometimes brighter than others but still shining through the dark. still pushing it's way through each bladed hole in the foliage. still making the face of the fox and coyote shine softly in their hunt. you grew up here. among the flies and river rot. down by the creek where we ran together and our feet were always gleaming; wet from the water and the trees. there are trees lining around the flowers. a great moat that holds us in, made of oak and pine, some birch interspersed among leaves and i know your face is between them. there are bushes that house families, some of them are as big as our house. small birds and little mamals alike live together in the brush and my brother and i used to find fox babies in the spring. our home is in the center, surrounded by everything and the earth sits firmly beneath us. there are hundreds of bees in the summer, and in winter, chimney smoke comes wisping out of the bricks. the yard expands for evening and we're out until we choose to see no more. our hands numb from the bark, pieces of rock crushed beneath our nails. when we'd see the sun coming up i'd run, full force, into that blinding headlight; down the driveway and through the trees and sometimes you'd follow me. when we ran through the dirt and grass , at last i remember i was free, empty of all need to be anywhere but exactly where i was standing. a standing that stays changing. remember the little cuts we'd get on our cheeks, how simply they bled. like tears after laughing. or fighting. i cherish them rightly, regardless of their spawning, despite their faulted home and the need i hone to replace them. and how the worms stuck between our toes. and how we peeled them out so vigorously, as if relishing the strength, the ability now found, to demonize ourselves and in the sunshine i saw red lines. from the animals we had killed. and the blood they spilled for us lay crumbling now in the dust. blood of the deer. the fawns. the frogs. the dogs. the insects. and the ants. and the butterfly i skinned alive. and the raven that you murdered. and the shivering salmon we kicked across the sun scorched rocks. i remember their eyes, staring eagerly past me." the dirt is a room. the dirt is below the meadow. "underneath our old house there was a canyon. made of spider webs and filling light, it fell far underneath our doorway. remember we used to sneak beneath it. we sat there for hours and days. sometimes when it was raining, we would pretend we were swimming. our bones scraped against the wood as we played and the blood mixed black with the soil. so we called it dirt. you used to love the way it looked. remember the time you brought the dog down to see it with us. and it was raining and the storm was scaring her. but you held her down anyway. she shivered in the mud and we stared into her eyes and now when she walks, it is with a certain shyness. you used to love being underneath things, the way it felt to be squeezed. i think it made you feel safe, to know that you were being held, whether it was held down, or up, or wherever. you always needed a stronger hand than me and i was always jealous of that. you dug a hole one afternoon, looking for a way to save a friend. you said she had fallen and needed a special root, to heal her crumpled wings. she had been standing in a tree, you said, and you saw her sitting there. and you said you wanted to know if she was real. so you threw a rock at her head. and it hit her. and she fell. and now that her wings and beak and feathers were all laying broken in the earth, the black of her coat mirrored but only slightly by the dullness of the earth. you wanted to find a way to help her. and this hole, this hole would help rebuild her. she could be reborn by the earth. the soil had told you. and so you dug. deep shovel fulls into the dirt. through root after root and i swear i could hear the trees screaming. behind the house is the graveyard, the one we made for our passions. it was sunny when we decided that we would memorialize our masters. the soft flowers we had found by the creek. the creek's water we had collected to keep. everything we felt deserved a better death. we made crosses out of stones, laying each mark and then knowing it was over and by then end there must have been a hundred. but you were diligent still. i look at you now and i can still see the tears in your eyes. i can still hear your manic screaming as you're walking down the driveway towards me. pulling the corpse of our hound. and your face, how you've stained it. and the soil, how you painted it. because all you ever wanted was to show her." a field is a room. a field is above the meadow. the field is below the sky. "the field that taught us pride, that's how i remember it. the tall golden grass, bleached nearly white under the constant face of the sun. the wrinkles in my eyes from squinting down the way at you; and all of those times you begged me to chase you. there were logs that we arranged into a pile. we made them something we could jump over. a way to prove our worth. and we would spend hours just jumping, and running, around and around the cluttered monolith. and the dirt caked ceaselessly around our eyes, like the eye black of our favorite baseball players. and even when the sun scalped our skin, and the blisters in our toes began to take hold of our minds, we would run. and jump. agin and again. and when the sun died each evening we would stumble back together, our socks would be bloody and the dirt never looked so happy. when you learned how to build a kite you wanted to fly it immediately, before the wind even rose. so we went and we stood, and we threw it up into the sky but the clouds smacked it back down to us. over and over again. one weekend you caught a snake. and you kept it under a rock as your pet. it wasn't a big snake but you insisted that it was the most poisonous in the world. you insisted that i be afraid, that i praise you for saving us. you said look at how scary it is. look at the way it wants to eat you. and so i did. and so i praised you. i told our parents. i told our dogs. i went to the graveyard and i told the tombstones. i went to the schoolyard and i told our teachers. told them about your triumph, made them relish in your skill. but still they didn't see it with such wonder. they didn't appreciate the way it stayed softly in your palm. they didn't care for your connection. they couldn't notice that you weren't afraid. and so you murdered the snake. in the morning, under the sunshine, you put it down and smashed it's head with the rock. the one you had kept it under. it's home. i'll never forget the stain it left in the dirt." the sky is a room. the sky is above the field. "i remember the way the clouds looked. we used to lay out in the grass or dirt for hours, looking up, watching the earth move. and we would be silent, because in those minutes and hours and seconds and days you could hear the way the sky sounded. the creaking of the hemispheres as they slowly turned, gazing on with the earth like always. like forever. and you'd tell me which clouds looked like animals and why. and you'd tell me which clouds looked like nothing and why. and you'd never grow tired of it. and neither would i. because we were more alive and closer to each other's breathing in those fleeting seconds than we ever got in years and years of beating it out of each other. when it rained we would stand under the suffocating blanket of water and laugh, giddy with the simplicity of interaction, the humanity of a natural cylce, happy because the sky had cracked open and a gaping hole now looked down upon us. as the water drowned our bodies you said you could see it clearer this time, said it looked like a great diamond staring out across the horizon. you said it was heaven and that the sky would always look up to it. like a younger to his father. or a brother to another. once we saw an eagle flying alone at sunrise. you spotted it, picking the wings out from the background of ten thousand gleaming leaves and then turned to me to make sure that i could see it too. and i could, i reassured you. i wouldn't miss it for the world, i told you. and for hours we ran through the sky, the great eagle filling our eyes with expectations and ideas; thoughts of grander lives, higher tree tops and a more wandering sky. and for hours we were lost among the clouds and saturation, only realizing how far we'd truly wandered when the light from our house went out, back in the distance. and so we said goodbye to our eagle. and so we turned and ran back, crossing the no-mans-land like desperate refugees, begging for safety and a place to call home. in those nights there was no sound as we ran. the crumbling dirt beneath our feet, the panting of our lungs, the whipping fabric of our clothes, now logged in sweat and soil; all silent behind the humming of the run. a soft droll, like the blaring horn of a train coming to station, but calm. the buzzing hive of insects at night, but silent, calmed by the perfected execution of the task. we were all running together in those evenings, whether it was with us or nipping at our heels, we were all running for home."
