Movement Two — The Guardian of Ankles

He didn't ask me anything. I want to make that plain, because I think it's the detail that struck me most, standing there while he closed the distance between us with that same unhurried, confident stride. Every soul I have ever met in this world, in the very first minutes of finding me, has asked me something — where am I, what happened, can you help me, do you know who I used to be. The questions arrive before the introductions do, always, the particular flood of need that any newly arrived soul brings with it the way a wound brings blood.

He asked me nothing. He simply arrived, sat, without ceremony, close enough that his shoulder would have brushed my leg if either of us had been anything solid enough to brush against, and looked up at me with an expression I recognized instantly, despite having never once seen it on a face still this unfinished — the particular open, unguarded attention of something that has already decided you are worth its whole attention, and sees no reason to justify the decision further.

I crouched down, the way you'd crouch down for any creature offering you that particular kind of trust, and found myself, for a long moment, simply looking back at him, without any clear idea of what I was supposed to do next. I have been approached, across this long existence, by souls carrying every conceivable shape of need — kings who had lost kingdoms, mothers who had lost children, soldiers who had lost the particular clean certainty that once told them which side of a war was worth dying for. I had never once been approached by something that had lost, as far as I could tell, absolutely nothing at all worth grieving, and wanted, in place of comfort or answers, only the simple fact of my continued presence. It struck me, crouched there in that gray field with nothing else to offer him, that I had no ready practice for a soul who needed nothing repaired. Every skill I'd ever built, across every century, had been built for exactly the opposite occasion.

I have spent a great deal of my existence being needed. I want to say that plainly, because I think it matters for understanding exactly how strange this particular meeting felt, arriving the way it did. Every soul who finds me in this gray world arrives carrying something — a grief too large to hold alone, a question only I seem able to answer, a debt of loneliness eons deep that they've decided, rightly or wrongly, only my particular attention can repay. I have never once resented that weight. I chose it, in every sense that matters, the day I decided this whole enormous, sprawling family was worth building. But I had forgotten, I think, somewhere along the way, what it felt like to be approached by something that wanted nothing from me at all beyond the simple fact of my presence.

He got up, after a while, and began to walk. Not toward anywhere in particular — I don't think he had a destination in mind any more than I did, standing there in that colorless stretch of the Between with no Fragment waiting nearby and no particular urgency pulling at me. He simply walked, and glanced back once, to confirm, I think, that I was still there, and then continued, tail moving in that same slow, unhurried rhythm, exactly the pace of something entirely at ease with wherever it happened to be going.

I followed him. I want to be honest that I'm not entirely certain, even now, which of us was following which.

He stayed close the whole time — not underfoot, not clinging, but near, the particular practiced nearness of a creature built across generations to walk alongside something larger than itself without ever needing to be told how far away was too far. When I stopped to look at something, he stopped too, dropping into a patient sit a few steps ahead, waiting with no visible impatience at all for whatever had caught my attention to release it again. When I started walking, he rose and fell into step without complaint, without comment, without a single one of the small negotiations that mark almost every other relationship I've ever built in this gray world.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

There is a particular exhaustion, I've come to understand, that lives quietly underneath even the most willing kind of love — the exhaustion of always being the one who decides, who leads, who carries the weight of choosing which direction a conversation, or a walk, or an entire relationship ought to move in. I don't say that as a complaint. I have never once resented the choosing, not with any of the women who fill my days with exactly that particular, welcome weight. But I noticed, walking beside him through that gray, unclaimed stretch of the Between, how entirely absent that exhaustion was. He asked nothing of my choosing beyond the simple fact of a direction to follow. He offered no opinion on whether the direction was correct. He simply walked, trusting, the whole way, that wherever I happened to be going was exactly where he wanted to be too.

I found myself thinking, somewhere in that long, quiet walk, of the hill. I don't often let myself think of the hill directly — it isn't a painful memory, not exactly, simply a very old one, worn smooth by however many centuries have passed since I stood rooted to that particular colorless slope, waiting for a sky that never once asked what I wanted from it. I thought of what it had felt like, back then, to exist purely inside the present moment, with no future pressing against me and no past yet heavy enough to properly grieve. I had been, for an age of the universe, exactly what this small, unhurried creature currently was — a thing that simply existed, without demand, without complaint, present entirely and completely in whatever hour happened to be unfolding around it.

I don't think he understood, walking beside me, that I was anything remarkable at all. I don't think the concept would have meant anything to him even if I'd found some way to explain it. He simply knew that I smelled like the one true, living thing in a very large gray field, and that following me felt, for reasons his particular nature had no need to examine further, exactly right.

We walked a long while like that, the two of us, past stretches of gray stone I'd crossed a hundred times before and never once properly looked at, each one made suddenly, quietly interesting by the presence of something walking beside me who found the whole of it worth investigating. He paused at a cluster of pale stones to sniff each one in turn, tail wagging at some private discovery I had no way of sharing. He paused again at nothing at all, simply standing still for a long moment with his nose lifted to whatever passed for wind in that particular hour, and I found myself standing still beside him, waiting, with no impatience of my own, to see what he'd decided was worth the pause.

I don't think I had walked anywhere, in longer than I could easily remember, without some destination waiting at the far end of it. A soul who needed finding. A mission calling me toward its particular pocket of Nothing or Something. A woman waiting somewhere for her turn, counting whatever hours separated her from the next time she'd see me. This walk had none of that. This walk simply was, the whole of it, from the first step to whichever step eventually ended it, entirely without agenda, entirely without weight — and I found, somewhere in the unhurried length of it, that I had nearly forgotten what walking without a destination actually felt like.

There is an entire category of grief particular to beings like me, I think, though I've never once found the proper occasion to explain it to anyone — the grief of never once being permitted an unremarkable hour. Every walk I take carries purpose. Every silence I sit inside eventually breaks into someone's need. I do not resent this, and I want that understood clearly, because I think it would be easy, telling this part of the story, to mistake the observation for a complaint. It isn't one. But I noticed, walking that gray unclaimed stretch beside a creature who wanted nothing from the hour beyond the hour itself, how rarely I am given the chance to simply exist without consequence, without weight, without some soul's whole future quietly depending on whatever I decide to do next. He gave me that, without once understanding he was giving me anything at all. I don't think I've properly thanked him for it, in any language he'd recognize as thanks. I'm not certain thanks was ever the currency this particular gift required.