Imagine a twisted knot of anxiety that spirals upwards like a thorn-jutted bramble. It is dark, a matte architecture in a room lit by buzzing LEDs, but there are many of these brambles side by side, interwoven, interlaced, interconnected. A black abstract sculpture garden under a pitch yellow sun in a sea-black sky, an endless field of nothing else. The air is still; there is no wind down here, though up high the gales reach hurricane speeds enough to rip the wings off of birds and flies.
There are no birds here. There are no flies.
The horizon is stark white. And somewhere under the horizon is a sea, and on that sea is a ship, and on that ship is nobody of importance at all. No people worth anything come to this place. This person is not significant today. Not like this.
The brambles groan as the sun rises. This morning is deadly silent, as always. The ground is stiff, hard. It looks to be made of stone, inhospitable — it seems impossible that these brambles could grow here, but they do because in truth the ground is made of glass beads, black as the bramble-roots that work through their depths. Do they find water? Perhaps they imagine so, and they are satisfied as a result. Perhaps they dream of quenching that endless thirst they all keep, of summoning great tidal floods of ice cubes and potable water, of gulping down thousands of gallons, of drinking their fill. These brambles do not remember what it would feel like in the bodies they have now. These brambles yet dream, and they do not know reality.
The ship draws closer on the horizon. It wears red sails, teak-silvered boards, a serpent's shape on the mast. It is inevitable, looming, ridiculous in its journey yet ever drawing nearer. It is coming and the brambles know this, except for the ones who don't, and they anticipate it, except for the ones who don't. Perhaps the ship will bring water. Perhaps the brambles fear water, now, and scorn the opportunity, have grown used to the thirst, want to stay jutted architecture forever.
Perhaps they do not scorn. Perhaps they terrify. Perhaps, after all, water would mean contentment. Perhaps water would mean these brambles were doing wrong by themselves living in this desert, under this black and moonless sky all this time. Perhaps a taste of joy is loathsome to those so diminished.
Perhaps this ship is coming for one bramble in particular, and the brambles who are not the one this ship comes for fear because it shows them that they are capable of leaving.
Let us observe their state, the endless bramble woods. Notice, now, from the shifted light that the sun has risen higher, how shapes have changed. Not in this one, but in that one. Not in that one, but in the other one. Some of these brambles have died. Some have left, finding their own way unstuck from this purgatory of their own making. Some have stayed, but stayed unchanged. And some have also stayed, but become a different shape along the way.
The brambles are lonely. The sun rises still, the white horizon left behind. In its absence, the brambles twist, contort, grow higher still. They are black branches, all scalene and right and isosceles triangles, gnarled fingers of trees clawing at the empty pitch above and still lit like they are black painted woodcuts drying in the sun. Distinct, distinguished, brilliant. Shapes utterly alien and unfortunate in their solitude, despite being so tangled, so intertwined. No brambles — no forest — is so alone as each of these structures together. No matter how alive they are, no matter how close they become, they will never be allowed the company they crave. No amount of touch, communication, adoration will fulfill them, for that is simply how they are. That is the nature of their solitude, and that is the nature of their very being. To be anything else is to be not a bramble. To be capable of connection, of love, of accepting change and future and past and themselves most of all — to be that is to leave this hellish desert. To uproot oneself, say goodbye to the midnight sun, the endless white horizon, the day that never ends, the sun that spirals rather than transverses the black above. To imagine stars. To leave without knowing how to swim — or perhaps with knowing, but equally with knowing how they washed back ashore after so much effort of swimming and somehow not drowning. It seems impossible.
Some do, though. Some leave, cast themselves to distant shore. More often than not they come back eventually, find themselves washed upon the black sand beach, replant their roots in resignation — or sick familiarity. Tell themselves they crave the solitude, the isolation, the dehydration. Imagine the flavour of water while withering, tell themselves they love to die. It is a lie, but no bramble of this forest would be able to tell you this. Here, no bramble lives long — it is a death sentence, being here. No plant can survive without water. And yet these brambles try.
In another part of the world, there is a green forest. Many of these brambles originated here. That is all you need to know of that — this story is not about green leaves, plump fruits, budding flowers, creeping vines. This story is not about lush undergrowth, intertangled shrubs, groundcover every other moment switching between battling wars and mercilessly coexisting, nor the squish that comes of loam inches upon inches upon feet thick, nor the duff deep enough to swim in, and that that is what the isopods do like a 3D jungle gym. This story is not about plunging valleys and sheer stone cliffs that gleam wetly in the sun with hundreds of tiny trickling waterfalls that garner pockets in the limestone first, then soil that drifts down from above, then mosses to grow in the humidity and nutrients, then ferns and epiphytes and aerophytes brilliant red and green and orange, geraniums once in a while clambering down as seedlings and spreading their faerie-umbrella leaves to drape tens of feet down in inches-long trails at a distance that turn into wide-spanning slackline circus bridges as the gorges widen. When the sun sets, the sky turns rosy red and then gold and then orange and purple and blue-violet and then indigo black studded with tiny silver bright lights that scintillate, twinkle in a thousand dazzling colours every second so fast that the untrained eye sees them as shattering. They are beautiful and inspire so many dreams. And when the day rises it comes up in the East and the world comes alive with shadows, sounds, life, each new leaf straining towards the sun.
This story is not about this. It is not about jungles so lush where the air is so thick with life that coexistence is keenly felt in each microbe crushed underfoot as one walks, where one is equally aware of how the trail one cuts through the monsteras with leaves taller than a person will become a deer-trail, a monkey-lope, a fruit-gathering desire path for all the animals smaller or less nimble than you are who need others to help them thrive. This story is not about webs of life, nor intermingling of creatures, nor codependence in an ecosystem, nor empathy, nor understanding of how the world ticks by accommodating each and every one of its creatures as a part of its whole. How no activity goes without being part of the circle of life; how everything is a valid way of existing, and no rules are needed to govern living because living is succeeding in being alive and that is the bare minimum needed, and no worries are needed beyond this.
A world like this needs to be mentioned because without knowing that anything exists beyond the island we are at now — where the sunlight continues into perpetuity and no matter how much touch or love anyone gets there is still a universe’s gasp between their hearts and minds — you may be tricked into thinking that that is all there is. That life is destined to be this way. That to live means only however you pass the time before you die.
In the jungle, there is no thought even for water, because it is so plentiful. Sometimes there are droughts, but never like the self-induced terror found in the desert island here. When the droughts come, though they are a far cry from the desert, it is a horror because there is a baseline understanding of the needs of creatures, and that to exist in drought for long is to suffer and die.
Exit the jungle, now. We will not speak of it again until the end.
It is almost night on the island. But the sun was just rising, you might say. Was it, though? Does it even matter? Let’s call it the sun is setting, then. It doesn’t matter. Night never truly arrives in this place — the sun spirals up towards the center of the horizon, then spirals back down to rest at the edge once more, like this is the arctic. This is not the arctic. Nor can one tell where the center of the horizon is — it is too difficult to see. The brambles climb over each other, forever stunted and begging for water but never drinking an ounce save for what will keep them barely alive, begrudgingly, day by day. Nobody has time to look at the sun when they are too preoccupied with only drinking enough to live.
On the horizon is the ship. You remember the ship. It is closer now.
Look back. The island is different again. Let us say that night happened, has passed. The brambles have changed yet again, are taller or shorter or older or younger. The younger ones are younger because they replaced the ones who died overnight, or in the past five minutes.
The island grows tedious. There is no difference day by day. You, listener, grow weary of hearing about it. The endless monotony, the drudgery of purgatory. Nothing can prepare you for the drag that is waiting for something that already exists, of denying yourself the pleasure of living life to the fullest with means of doing so within reach every second of every waking day. Of tormenting yourself, of turning basic living into a game of numbers and chances. Of risking every night in a gamble of not waking up, of ripping your heart apart from the strain of keeping yourself alive with the game you’re playing. Of obsessing over water. But water isn’t the thing these brambles seek, is it?
The ship is our next passage in this journey, but it is not here yet. It is long on the horizon, coming closer at an impossible speed, but it will take time to get here.
Let me tell you another story while we wait. A parable. It is called The Bamboo and the Firefly.
Once upon a time, there was a firefly in a stand of bamboo.
This firefly weaves through the pitch-black canebrake, spears of the dead and killing razor leaves ragged and unforeseeable. She flies in circles, forever trying to breach the sword-dense leaves above. Fireflies are meant to fly, and this is the only way of joining the other fireflies — this is what everyone has always told her. And so she flies, and she thinks that it is right. But every time she flies high, she encounters a deadly mist that weighs her down in flight until she is almost low enough to touch the ground. Days go by of her rising and falling in this way, and every day she grows weaker — soon, she will succumb to the mist completely and fall to the ground, where she will surely be eaten by frogs.
One night, the worst comes true: the weight of her wings in the wet makes flight impossible, and instead of sinking she falls outright. But instead of surrendering to her fate and falling all the way to her death, she remembers that she has legs, and she alights on a bamboo pole. Humiliating, this, but accepting help is sometimes essential for survival. It is there that she remembers how she had made it to high places in the past: as a larva, she had had no wings at all, and she would climb stalks with her legs. Despite the ache in her wings, the shame in not flying as a firefly is meant to do, and the lullabies of frogs compelling her to sleep, she does as she only faintly remembers doing as a larva and climbs the bamboo. By climbing, she avoids the leaves, and so by climbing she reaches above the copse where, free from the mist and sky-shrouding leaves, she is finally able to regain her strength and fly up to join her brethren.
The ship has arrived. The ship has rigging of gold, an alien colour here — it glitters in the ever-present sun, shines against the bleak white horizon like streaks of lanternlight in oil-smeared glass. The ship’s sails are red like wine, carrying the colour of a distant sky, and the mast is carved to have a serpent coiled about it like it is the staff of a god. Hand-carved — it must have taken so long, so much effort. So many years and so much change in muscle, memory, imagination to occur. No craftsman would make such a thing, not by commission — only a captain truly dedicated to living as they do would do such a thing, and they would do it alone, because such an undertaking would be a personal triumph, nobody else’s. This is their doing, and it is brilliant.
On the prow of this ship stands a singular individual of remarkable name, and you do not get to know it. Not today. They are dressed in peacock blue, both their silken shirt and worker’s pants. Their boots are black leather, grippy on the bottom, and their feet are staggered in a fighter’s stance, well-adjusted for the rocking of waves. Weighting this individual’s shoulders is a thick, heavy oilcoat without distinguishable origin. This individual’s hair is an utterly normal shade and cut, and their hands are wild, pale, spidery things of long joints and wickedly thin, sharp nails. They have a ring on each thumb — one from the sea that spins, and one from their beloved that gleams. There is no other crew aboard this ship, only this individual, but somewhere in this individual’s heart lingers a light that will bring them home, should they ever lose their way.
The brambles on the shore creak. Nobody comes to this island, never willingly. Sometimes knowingly, but always in self-denial at first, or through exceptional circumstances of storms and gales like the one constantly circling this island at ten thousand feet that rips the wings from birds and flies. This individual is not here to be a bramble. This person is here to bring a bramble home.
The individual steps ashore. The docking plank is long, flexible, durable, well-used. Like this person has been to many places, has been many things, will be many more. This individual left a part of themselves here, on this island. They are here, finally, to retrieve it.
The brambles are wicked, sharp, angular. They have thorns that cut, that spear, that will kill when given the chance. The brambles know what it means when someone arrives for a part of themselves left behind. But today, just like every other day, they part for this person. The brambles, remember, are not fearful nor hateful of outsiders. They are terribly lonely. And in each bramble’s heart — at least their heart, if not in their whole being — they know: they do need water, and leaving is the best for them. For so many, they do not know how. How to leave safely, how to leave without returning eventually.
This captain — individual — knows that they may cast this part of themselves back to the island eventually. But they hope they will not do so. They have gained necessary experience here, gleaned all the information they ever wished to know. Have made changes to themselves they should and should not have done. Now it is time to go.
They walk to the center of the island. Right where the copse grows tallest, right beneath where the sun dries them out the most. Not at the center-center, where the brambles suddenly grow short again, stunted by the ever-dwindling water they allow themselves to leach from the soil each day, but the outer ring of that, where the brambles take in just enough to sustain themselves. Just enough to trick their bodies into not dying.
The captain walks up to a particularly twisted architecture. Kneels softly, gently at the base. The oilcoat looks like bird wings fit for a human, sized to proportion. Perhaps this captain keeps another self, a dream-self, on another island. One of stories and characters, where the captain imagines what it would mean to be a person who can fly, who can do magic with the etchings of a fingertip in dust or pen on skin, who has a companion who always knows how they feel but retains the independence to assess what the other needs for comfort. Perhaps this captain has this, somewhere. Perhaps there is this, and perhaps there are many more. Only time will tell.
The captain kneels. And the captain knocks at the base of the blackened, twisted bramble-tree.
The bramble’s shell cracks like a door left unlocked and gently pushed. Out steps an emaciated man of no remarkable name with hair of utterly normal shade, though it is greasy and is long in need of a cut. The man does not have lanugo, though it was near in developing, and the captain proffers his oilcoat. It smells of oranges plucked from a giant pillar-tree that glowed like the sun. In another sea, in another time. It carries the weight of memories — this is why this coat is heavy. Not from what it holds, physically, but what it contains, lifewise. Wearing it changes you, like how dog tags change a person into a soldier, or how a badge and white coat transform a doctor into a spouse at the end of a day slow and rich in experience as molasses. A spouse who will prepare dinner, will make the bed, do laundry, write stories, go to bed. One who loves plushies in their free time, who has cats, who goes on runs and enjoys hikes in the woods. And then wake the next day, don their coat, clip their badge to their lapel, and become the other person all over again. The captain knows this. They retain the spark of the sea in their heart, will not lose themselves from a few minutes without their coat. But the part of themselves they left behind has been without their memories of life outside the island for so long — they need to remember. And they do: they drink the memories the coat provides with greed, with satiety, with love, with grateful tears.
The captain steps forward, pauses. The brambles all around are different again. Some died, some changed, some survived, some sprouted anew to replace those gone. Some managed to escape the island, at least for now — those ones have cracked, just like this one for the part of himself. The one he came for.
He takes himself in his arms. They are so cold.
They walk towards the shore together, back to the boat. Board.
The ship leaves, and it is one person wearing the coat again. They seem just a little bit fuller, brighter, more complete. They have merged again, stolen back the part they left behind. They may come here again, if things are terrible again, but this individual of no remarkable name hopes not. The island of no night and no stars is dreary, dull, lifeless. An endless purgatory.
Perhaps the captain will visit the jungle next. Or perhaps the captain will sail to the dreaming isles, or the artist’s autumn sea where the air smells of roses, or the fast-lightning isles where martial combat and physical prowess reign. The captain does not know. But now they have more of themselves to share with the world, now that part of themselves is being reigned in. Some might remain at the old island, but at the very least they have the core of themselves. As the bramble it used to be crumbles, more and more of the captain will return, and that means more of the captain that can be devoted elsewhere. There is only ever so much of a person, and it is time to put right what devotions had been erroneously misplaced.
On the island, life continues. Some brambles die, some survive, some change. Some return when they had been gone for so long, and others pretend at leaving for different islands, dreaming of water while leaving their roots behind in the black sand soil that looks like stone. The sun will never set — do not anticipate that it ever will. Know only that this island produces the dead, once they have achieved a total lack of water as they dream to be. And the dead can tell no tales — it is why there are no signs outside the island telling others of the dangers of setting root there: because only the dead and dying know to say such things, and by then they cannot think, let alone write. And soon they are gone.
The sun sets again on the white horizon, not truly gone. Tomorrow the sun will rise, and the day will show that the brambles have changed once more: this time, with one less in their rank. Beyond the sea where the bramble-island lingers, there are birds, and there are flies. It has been so long since they were last seen, even for a part of himself, and the captain weeps in the blush of sunset on the blue and purple horizon.
It is good to be back at sea.
No matter how hard it may be. Sometimes the bramble-twigs cling to my skin. I tug them free as gently as I can.