Work Text:
He had been dropped by the train tracks, a cruel sort of joke.
The sky was harmless. An unassuming pale blue, maybe early in the morning. The trees were dull and whispered in shifting light on their needles like glitter.
His clothes were in tatters then, eyes wide with the impression of unspeakable violence, just a little more than a corpse. He was inconsolable for a few hours. He was on his knees folded over himself, crying and gasping stiffly like a sick animal. Memories stuck to him like stomach acid on his teeth, the knowledge and anticipation of pain, the ache of his bones and any negative space therein knew pain too. He knew it all so intimately that the memory drilled into his skull with the same force as the instant and if only. If only he could catch his breath, the feeling of his stinging lungs expanding against his ribs nigh unbearable. Nothing chased him.
He tried to lie flat on the wet grass to forget that he had a body. It worked for a little and at the very least, the view was nice. The summits of the pines pointed to one circle in the sky and it gave him hope, the thought of a snake devouring itself, stretched around a sunny rock. He didn’t like snakes. He had always been terrified of snakes, even as a child. Now it seemed he wasn’t terrified of anything other than perhaps the color yellow but the sunlight came out cool toned on his surroundings and he gave silent thanks for it. He seemed to be dead and as time passed there, lying on the grass, he fell in love with everything.
Nobody alive in the world knew of him like this.
Miraculously, he got up, and walked along those train tracks. Walk is a generous term; that is to say he put one foot in front of the other and that was it, no flourish involved. A slow and pained stagger, more like it. In an hour he could make a little over a mile. There were mountains far off, but here there were only trees, a generous clearing where the tracks were. He didn’t think about the direction- he couldn’t even remember what direction the sun set in- and thought it better to simply walk. He could see birds and liked that he could connect their songs to his sight.
I am alive. I am alive. I am alive and alone and therefore a living secret. Who knows my name?
Around noon, a train passed. He heard it before he saw it. The sound was like a death rattle. A hissing beast of steel and steam and he equated the noise to blood and sweat and dirt, the tremble of his muscles and the gritting of his teeth. The trees were swallowed in shadow. He couldn’t see the birds. They had left. They had wings.
Graciously, they had wings.
He looked at the tracks.
Everything is for a reason.
This body means nothing to me.
What is your name?
The train came. He was a few meters away from it, and when it did pass, a feeling of great wonder washed over him. Yes, it was a beast, a strange iron creature. But it was beautiful. It had a call of its own, like a bird, like a thing of nature should. He saw people.
People.
They stood in pairs between the train cars or in groups on flat platforms, holding their caps in one hand, waving to him as they passed. They yelled to him in something resembling a cheer.
He reached out.
He leaned perilously forward and his weak body threatened to fall after his hand. He didn’t know his goal. He just reached out, his palm downward.
Before the train disappeared, one man reached back.
He gripped a rail hard, his strong body in the same manner, leaning forward with a careless sort of hope away from the train. He wore a blue sweater. A blue sweater like a lake he loved. He was gone in a second. And yet he reached. Their hands never touched; it was the principle. The hope, as humans, to make contact.
He stood there after the train passed, feeling its ghost.
The image would linger in his mind for years to come.
His hunger wouldn’t allow him to breathe too deeply and yet there he breathed in all the perfume of life he could take in.
I ask you again. What is your name?
I am alive. That is all.
He went on.