THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART FIFTEEN:

Eden drove the two of them for lunch to a small tavern known locally for its great salads and sandwiches. They sat on the same side of a booth, their hips and legs touching then drove to a small park where she found a secluded glen. The early afternoon had warmed considerably under a bright sun and she spread a wool blanket on the grass. Wadsworth flopped just off its edge and, off duty, watched the squirrels and one waddly groundhog, a bit sluggish this late

in the year.

"He's got his back turned," Eden whispered gratefully to Marshall as he settled down

beside her, the leather of his jacket making slight creaking sounds.

"Wadsworth?"  Who, of course, turned his head at the sound of his name.

"Yeah, him," Eden laughed. "I'm not used to an audience, canine or not."

"He's very discreet."

"I suspect so, but...still."  The dog turned his attention back to the groundhog, whom he currently found much more interesting than the two humans sitting on the blanket.

"Tell me," he said.

"Tell you what?"

"Describe where we are."  He truly wanted to see how she'd go about it.  Jeffrey had been

really good at it, giving him a sense of space and environment, but no one else had ever

bothered quite so intently as his brother had.

She took his right hand, pulling it into her lap.  "Well, I know you know green and where

we're sitting is still rather green since our first real frost was this morning.  So we're this

little island on my brown blanket in the middle of a sea of green about, oh, 50 feet across

and slanting to your left down toward a line of trees. A lot of the leaves are down already,

but there's one big oak with a lot of really crisp-looking pale brown leaves still holding tight.

I think the oaks do that, hold onto their old leaves because they're about the last of the trees

to trust the spring and put out new ones.  Oaks are big, strong trees and stand out from the others by their shape and size and some aura of magic they have about them."

He listened to every word,  loving the sound of her voice, what she said, the way she said it.

She was trying really hard to make it real for him. "There's a lot of underbrush there so it

looks like it would be hard to walk and the woods go back a long ways, so that they just sort

of disappear into shadows of shadows and you can't tell where it all ends. About 10 feet to your

left is a single big rock sticking up through the grass, about 5 feet across and maybe two feet high. It's kind of flat on the top and makes you want to go over and stand on it just because you can. There's one tall clump of grass tucked in real close to the side furthest from you, too close for the lawnmower to reach. It's got several big tufts of seedheads on it curving against the rock.  Behind us, the meadow slopes up to a bit of a ridge and right in the middle of that is the dirt

path we followed to get here. There's a single evergreen that looks a lot like a huge Christmas tree just to the left of where the path ends at the edge of the meadow and just to the left of it

are three stumps, fairly large ones, where trees have been cut down and the grass hasn't grown
yet in the dirt area that used to be under their branches. Wadsworth is watching a fat greyish-brown ground hog at the edge of the meadow straight in front of us. It's poking around near a half-rotted log and a cluster of saplings."

He squeezed her hand appreciatively. "Thank you." Tipping his head back, he let the sun shine on his face, glinting off his glasses. "All my life I've tried to imagine what seeing is. But I can't, not really.  It must be something to be able to gather all that information like you did. It has to
be truly amazing. I think sometimes of trying to describe music, voices, any sound at all to someone who's never heard. There's just no way to convey it. You have to hear to understand sound. Yes, you can lay your hands on the piano top and feel the vibration, the resonance of it,
but you don't really know what hearing is. It's like that with me and sight."

"Does it bother you?"

"Not in the least.  If I can't even imagine it, I can't really miss it.  I know it must be wonderful," he paused and reached out, brushing his hand over the grass, "but green for me is touch and scent and even taste.  There's a definite mood, a presence to green that makes it different from brown, but what you perceive as green is a language I can never speak."

"How is brown different from green...for you?"

"Brown is heavier, thicker than green and smells like the earth, like layers of decaying leaves and the bark of trees. You dig your fingers down into brown and come back with mud caked under your nails. Brown is deep and solid and filled with secret places like the tunnels of earthworms or the bit of air under a pile of blankets."

She looked up at the sky. "And blue?"

"Blue is when you hear a single, pure bell tone and it starts to fade away but just keeps

going and going and going and never really ends because you never stop hearing it."

She thought, for the first time in her life, she understood what blue was. She was filled with a thousand things to say and nothing to say all at once. He seemed to realize that and lay carefully back on the blanket so his right shoulder came down first, taking the weight of his body. She

lay beside him on his right, facing him.  He nuzzled his nose into her cheek and she sighed contentedly, cuddling close to him, her head resting on his upper arm.  He kissed the tip of her nose.  She felt as though she were in some dream but such a thing was way too trite to say and, besides, his lips had found hers again and she had much more important things to do with her mouth than form words.

She found, lying there, his lips warm on hers, that neither sight nor sightlessness mattered.

Her eyes were closed and everything was a matter of nerve endings and mutuality of touch

and wanting.  Right here, right now, in this moment, in this way, they were in the same

world and their experience of it was the same.  She was almost overcome by the intense

closeness of it, the lack of separation of it and wondered vaguely if it were possible to live

forever on a blanket held in his embrace.

They lay there a long time, kissing quietly, exploring in that way one does when 'other' has

been so newly found. His hand curved up behind her head, his fingers playing with long

strands of her hair.  He lay half-tipped onto his right side, but after a while his left shoulder began to complain from the slight strain the position caused and he had to lie back.  She was concerned because she saw the crease form between his brows. "Are you all right?"

"Mmm hmm," he murmured, his eyes closed behind his glasses. "Just need to rest the shoulder

a bit."

His right arm was still around her and she nestled into him enough that she could hear his

heart beating without putting weight on his chest.  She let her lids shut again, entering into

a place once more where sound and touch were the guideposts of being. His fingers still played with her hair, sending the gentlest tingling sensations down into her scalp. Her head moved a bit, carried by the rhythm of his breathing, but it was the sound of his heart that her consciousness began to orbit. 

After a few minutes she felt his hand drop away to the blanket and she looked up at his face.
His lips were slightly parted and she could tell he'd fallen asleep.  As she settled her cheek

back against him, she whispered, "I love you, Marshall Sinclair," and in that dichotomy of feeling that had been hers the last couple of days, was both amazed and not the least bit surprised.

ON TO PART 16

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