The Ancient Songs of Neptune

I published this a few months ago under a different title, but have been slowly working on it. Like the character in the story's reaching, my reaching toward getting this so it is "right" is also elusive. I'd love your thoughts and suggestions.


The Ancient Songs of Neptune


    Neptune is high above me now, huge and cold and blue. I can imagine seeing myself, perhaps as if in one of the pictures I paint: a small figure, alone on the vast plain of Triton, silhouetted against the stars and the deepest, purest, calmest blue in the solar system. I am thinking of you, of course.

    I'm always thinking of you.

    You are the reason I am here, distant from the mass of humanity, continuing my solo voyage to be near you. Maybe here on Triton, the very definition of blue, massive and soothing in the sky above me, I'll find you.

    It was an odd feeling watching them lower you into the ground. With your body in box dropping slowly down into the dark, I somehow knew that you—somehow the essence of you—was up. You were going up or out or some direction that wasn't down into the dirt.

    I don't know what comes after this. Some people tell me "nothing." Some tell me "everything." Some say heaven. Some say worms. I really don't know, but I'm sure that it's not "nothing," for I felt you going up. Out. Not even a whisper to me as you left, so compelling was your journey. It was not your choice to leave in such a way, of that I am confident.

    Being suddenly half a person is not an easy thing. Perhaps you know that at this point. One would think that a half a person would be at least manageable. But the problem is this—it's the wrong half that's left. The shell, the outside husk—that's all that remains. All the guts are gone or turned to greasy powder. All the stuff that makes birds' singing sound sweet and fall colors amaze and spring flowers refresh—all that is gone. That's the half that's not there. And without these things, what makes life manageable? What makes it worth living? So you see, I had to find you. I had to be close to you again. I had to retrieve these things, stuff the pieces back inside and hear the ticking again.

    Since I somehow knew that you went up, or out, I also knew that to find you, I would have to go up and out, too.

    At first, I tried mountains. Not Everest or anything that daring—what's a few thousand meters to me or you? I was up on top of things, peaks whose names I never learned, and I was looking still higher. My mind was reaching, straining with desperate fingers fully extended; I was calling to you. I could have scraped some of the blue off the sky to bring home to put on my wall, but I knew I still wasn't high enough. I knew that a few extra thousand feet would not be high enough. Even high up on the mountain, with thousand year old snow crunching under my feet and my lungs ripping themselves inside out to get oxygen, I knew that you were somewhere, somehow, still above me. Out of reach. The mountains could touch the sky, sure, but they could not reach the stars.

    To be clear, I did not get the sense that you were somehow calling to me or summoning me. Perhaps, once in a while, I received a feeling that you were fleeing like a giggling girl running in and out of October maples, hoping that I would catch you. Upon reflection, however, I feel sure that these feelings were fantasized by my own mind. Needing something, I fleshed them out further. See the red and gold and orange leaves fall and spin around us as I chase you. The chill breeze stings our cheeks that become rosy over the dimples of your smile.

    I painted such scenes, filled with color and wonder and sensuality and the vague, stinging pain of not wanting to forget. They were well received. They sold well. They flew off the easels and onto the walls of galleries and into the bedrooms of lovers. The women in these paintings all had your eyes, blazing blue like sorcerer's fire.

    I spoke to a navigator, the ones who with their minds make ships jump interstellar distances. Surely someone with such skills of mind could help me find you. I sat in her cabin before launch. We both stared at each other, and I clumsily explained my situation. She was patient and kind, but she explained that she could not help me. Her skills were in memory and knowledge and visualization and it appeared, she suggested, that I possessed those skills in sufficient depth already. I knew her answer went deeper than that. Her job was to visualize ships into different spaces, not to probe the phyche or find essences of loved ones scattered throughout the universe. I thanked her. She smiled sadly, but gave me a platonic embrace. She patted my arm like an old chum, but with subtle hesitance. I walked down the hallway to the common area, sat down and picked up a magazine that I did not read.

    So now I find myself on Triton, one of the coldest places in the solar system. I can stand here on a sheet of frozen methane, see ice volcanoes of liquid nitrogen assaying into the air, and stay nice and warm in my e-field. I have plenty of oxygen and plenty of time to think and sense if you are nearby. There are few people here. A few scientists and engineers have an outpost, and I have found some company there for checkers and poker, but I have successfully exiled myself from most of humanity. I can now focus my thoughts and energies to finding you. Indeed, I feel a small comfort that I am a little closer to you here.

    Neptune, calm and omnipresent above me, comforts me. It's blueness reaches into me and sings to me songs of love far too ancient for humans to remember. I think I'll stay here for a while to learn the language—or at least the essence—of these songs, even if you cannot be reached here. In a few months, I may move on, out towards the stars. Though you may not be as near as I would like, or need, here I can stand on this icy plain and look out at the countless stars that fill the universe. They remind me of the stars that once were in your eyes.

    I allow myself to weep. I paint. I give myself the privilege of remembering everything about you. That, at least, fills the corners of my empty shell. I have learned to be patient, knowing that you would never abandon me. I feel your playful waiting, hiding there among the stars.