On Balance Weighted- The Carnival

The storage closet is unsurprisingly dark. As we make our way through though it becomes surprisingly dim. A few more steps find us no longer pushing through brooms and mop buckets and miscellaneous supplies, but rather in a space fairly clear, and now lit from up ahead. We walk toward the light, but I make a point to follow my brother's steps precisely. One light becomes more, a candle flickering in the dark, seeming to multiply, given away by each flame's synchronized dance. "Ah, a hall of mirrors then." We each nod and he stops in his tracks, reaching forward until palm presses to what is revealed as glass. With lighting such as this, it seems this place might be arranged to stop or at least slow our progress, but my brother turns to me with a smirk and a long wink. "Care to take this one?" Just like that I recall water plinking against tile and my patience for such gratuitous delays shatters like these mirrors might have, had my brother not been here. Instead, I close my eyes and recall from whence I came. I whistle the tune that on some level I have never forgotten, and the walls, much more like those of eep now, accompany me with an equal joy expressed. I walk through the halls, following the distant tune, as if knowing I am on my way home. Soon enough the echo fades behind, as if playing me out, and I open my eyes to see a big top striped orange and red, amidst a field lit by tiki torches, and filled with people. My brother places his hand on my shoulder and says "Well done."

He steps to my side and we stand in silence as the sounds and lights feel as though they tell a story all their own. Screams, both joyous and excited, can be heard in rhythms as well, timed with the cadence of prizes won and the *woosh* of nearby rides spinning their riders through the air. I recall origins both unique and shared, and whistle seems insufficient to encapsulate my response to this spectacular message.

"Flashing Christmas Lights

They never saw us coming

Dazzled by the haze

Heard clear as a bell

Coalescing from this din

Ripple on the pond

Each word pebble thrown

Every note finely blown glass

To bid me uncork

Are you here tonight?

In how many ways moments

Become our favorites

Threading all angles

Some paths known only to us

Resewn and reseen

Like rain on tile floor

Drawing faster than path through

The candlelit maze

Foreshocks felt after

The tremor touch of your lips

Flings my eyes open

These moments glisten

As the carnival hums on

And starry eyes shine."

My brother remains stoic, silent, even as the last words fade from ear. The crowd seems unaffected, engrossed in their merrymaking, which is nothing new to me. Still, a drop of rain on the crown of my head suggests someone has been moved. More raindrops follow, but without haste, like a middle ground delineated by finger or boot in sand between this moment as seen in dream and in The Bard's tale. The drizzle continues, and I find myself comfortably drifting away with the memory of a time when such rain was a frequent blessing, so frequent that I hardly registered it at all. The crowd notices now, but it is the kind of rain that does not threaten a good night with mud soaked jeans, not for a few hours anyway, and so they continue playing their games, riding their rides, and laughing. I realize the hour and, without turning, say quietly "I had pictured this night going differently." "I didn't." Just like that, I hear her voice from up ahead, singing out above the crowd, on something sized and shaped more like a pedestal than a proper stage. Still, her song and strumming fill the air with a kind of visible, nearly tangible, magic, magic unmistakeable to me. 

I walk toward her, as I have before across so many realms, the stunned look of love equally unmistakeable on my face, these scales having been balanced with precision from before first glance. She looks like a medieval or perhaps faerie tale princess, downright glowing in her white dress. I stop far too close to her perch for subtlety, but that is the least of my concerns as my mind repeats its equations from first glance but slower, nearly manageably, like playing my old favorite song at a speed nearly audible, like eep graciously settling, just like the rain. She skips a note before she even looks my way, and somehow I know in that moment that she senses me. Without delay she turns and our eyes lock. How she manages to keep up appearances in such times is beyond my comprehension, but she quickly wraps up her song as I stare wide eyed, and then she kneels to get a closer vantage, as if in disbelief. She reaches out her hand, perhaps expecting me to be a ghost or spectre made manifest from her dreams. She leaves the initiation of contact to me, possibly hesitant to shatter such a welcome illusion. I cast caution to the wind, however, and, without a word, press my palm to hers. A shudder ripples through the realm, stronger than I had expected, and one which might have been noticeably out of place had the crowd been paying attention, and had a conveniently timed lightning bolt not struck the center of the main carnival ground, equidistant, I would imagine, between my brother and I, booming as if witness, sending the rest scattering.

We hardly notice a thing however; for as overshadowing the thunder was to the ripple for them, the ripple was to the thunder for us. I turn my hand, taking hers, and she hops gracefully to the damp ground. My brother walks up now and greets her like an old friend, saying his piece before adding "You two have a good night, I'll catch up with you later." Despite love's presence, felt like a weighted blanket now, holding my soulmate's hand I blurt out "Wait, won't you join us?" He stops in the now nearly empty carnival grounds and turns, perhaps considering doing that very thing, but then looks to the horizon just beyond us, as if politely looking just past the waning gibbous moon, and says "It's a lovely night for a walk I think, but how about one for the road?" I smile and turn to my soulmate who nods and wields her lute, at the ready as if someone requested a song she had played 100 times. I imagine stranger things have certainly happened, and have truly felt like they have been happening all along all these nonsensical timelines. Honestly it feels like this synchronicity of our souls by note and by verse- by my count- not yet concocted, is the first thing that has felt normal in quite some time. The words coalesce, as she plays me in.

"Dance in this wasteland, dance these fallow field(s)

We dance in our corners and dream wonders

They tremble at the sword that dreamer(s) wield(s)

Quake at the day dream cold logic sunders

Wanderer know you do not go alone

A little piece of me wanders with you

For their silence cried out the cornerstone

That steps would be blessed by sweet tune and view

Each in their corner, each holds their own key

A foreigner's door it unlocks elsewhere

Until ourselves in the mirror we see

Wayward steps vault tents but climb not one stair

Know these eyes will always see you brother

As he who danced first, to teach/save another."

He seems speechless for a few seconds, eyes moving from us to off in the distance, then to the ground, kicking an imaginary pebble. Finally, as if deciding words are not needed of him here and now, he gives her a hug, then extends his hand for a handshake to me. When I clasp his hand he pulls me in for a bro hug, which gets a giggle from my soulmate. Then he simply turns back toward the way we came. With spring and skip in his step he starts to whistle a tune I do not recognize, while recognizing the whistle all too well. I squeeze my soulmate's arm as she excitedly clings to me, an excitement I can feel but do not know the structured depths of. Just before entering the hall of mirrors, the guardian of that place nods him in; he flips him a coin, a token, nonetheless, and then holds his hands above his head, crossed at the wrists. With both fingers he snaps, and for a moments the whole realm shimmers. Dream turns to page, page turns to real, real turns to something like a dream, and we dance the spaces between. Or is that inverted? Time shall tell as he disappears past the curtain. I look up at the moon, still slowly climbing its way from the horizon, and then into my soulmate's eyes. We have all night, and the carnival patrons begin filtering back out from hiding, though their volume feels cushioned by the touch of her hand in mine. As if answering a question I haven't yet thought to ask this time around yet, she breaks this trance "Still, this one."