Forgotten Harvest

The harvesters row in circles.

They search the lagoon for days without sleep, months without food, years without speaking, and lifetimes without love. Some have forgotten for what they search, yet they remain focused on the search. They remain focused on the forgotten.

Those who interfere pay with pain.

A small child approaches a harvester, rippling the water in the lagoon, disrupting the harvester’s focus. In a flash of rage, the harvester slashes the child’s stomach with its razor-sharp oar, and immediately and returns to the harvest.

Why mutilate children? I seethe, fixing my panicked gaze on the harvester. It acts as though nothing has happened. To the harvester you see, nothing has happened. It has already forgotten.

What of the child? The small child does not scream in agony, it merely leans backward, its eyes rolled white to the back of its head and its mouth dumbly agape. While its wounds are exposed, blood does not burst forth. Instead, a swarm of hornets issues therefrom, paralyzing me with fear. And yet, the hornets are harmless. They are mere illusions, projected from many minute, mercuric bubbles. The projections fade, and these bubbles coalesce into one giant bubble, which in turn, shifts form and becomes a giant metal hornet. Yet it is not a nasty one. It is a silly, bulbous one--it is a small child’s plaything.

A small child.

The small child is now one of many small children, standing on the raft in the still lagoon.

Giggling, they set free the bulbous hornet. Then, they approach. Their eyes are wise, condescending, amused even, yet sad. No not sad, full of pity. Pity for me.

“We are forbidden from revealing our truth,” they say, their voices a thrumming chorus of sad, piercing vibrations. “We can only pray you decipher it of your own free will.”

“We can only pray, Harvester, that you remember what you have forgotten.”