And she had no idea what time of day it was. She wanted to leave this climate, this wetness. She becoming sodden, always drifting and softly dreaming. Sinking, once, in the deep darkness; into the terror that swallowed her. The imminent threat of "no return" whispering all around her; in the whale's gut of her fear; echoing and echoing. Another deeper wave and another "no return"; "no return" splashing against her mind, rhythm of the unceasing ocean. How she had cried and cursed then. Sworn to never again let the drifting carry her so far. Discover so much. Sworn to not feel that movement; rushing in its unquenchable way.

All logic said sternly, "It is only a feeling, the almost unseen end of the spectrum." Logic could not speak to her secure knowledge. The gut of the leviathan had been a teaching; she constantly repeated her heart's promise to never forget the lesson. She must say no to the joy; it must not again come so near to penetrating and filling. Then it was only a blind force, like white lightning, like the od shot. Only destruction, the apocalypse and only that.

Her mind searched out empty places in the air, waiting. She was watching calmly for a sign.

And then the drizzle began; quiet in the beginning, increasing like all other forms of rain. The drizzle began and soaked her. Choices moved beyond her reach, like flying ants. Filled, filled and filling; the emotion's enormity drowned her. Then empty, momentarily and not calm but at least not chaotic; simply being--wet.

This is the way she usually found herself; completely soaked. Soaked! The only word for this world; and she had to leave it. It was too damn sodden, soggy, and dead.

She is going home, trudging. Her legs move, putty-like; but like putty poisoned with lead. The legs lift, one after the other; arch, and plummet down. The motion is achingly slow, or so it seems to her. To the world's eyes, it is graceful. To the world, incredibly sensuous. She is going home.

From a small party, or a simple unplanned gathering, a 'get-together'; a scene, common in all its intrigues: the signals of one highly evolved life-form trying to communicate with another. Uncommon: this group of people having devised (in lieu of rational and effective precedents) a higher degree of intricate developments; though thousands had trudged the same road before.

Trudged. Trudging, a moving upstream in a steep riverbed; the sediment becoming softer and deeper, the further one goes. This is her motion, now, walking; her motion in life always, these days. Invisible fetters are wrapped around her limbs; her arms and legs; flimsy but horribly restricting. To move at all is a victory. To appear to move 'normally', miraculous. She sees the same gentle restraining threads on everyone; scarf-like chains on every person near her; even threaded to their roving eyes. She sees them and smiles, feeling tired. Her walk slows. There are moaning pains in her toes and ankles; her knees, too. Her determined struggle has not yet become machinelike; its life dissolved in the necessary rhythm that keeps it going. Yet it is only rebellion against that growth into automation that brings her the tired pain, the slow aching motion...and the rains begin.... The force, the might of this awful rain beating down on an oppressed earth; beating down upon her and the ooze through which she has been traveling. The rain begins the struggle to wipe away the fetters.

She realizes she must help. The force of nature alone is not sufficient, even for her own freedom. Lifting her dress and tying it about her waist, she begins to run; moving as quickly as she can. With this effort, the muscles in her legs and torso begin to flame. This is work, labor at its most pure; this toiling to rid oneself of chains imposed by some other. Pleasure sharp and murderous, rages through her suddenly. Her motion inside the rain is a war; her battling unnoticed. Even though catcalls seem to be flying from all directions. Tiny boys whistle at her sturdy legs, gasping exclamations of gosh and wow! She pays no attention. Older men whistle and stare, tickled by her constant effort, her stamina, and amazed that she seems to be enjoying what to all of them is an annoyance to be escaped as soon as possible.

At a traffic island she is momentarily distracted, people are shouting "you can't go that way" and she thinks they are warning her, though of what she doesn't know. When she turns however, she sees that a graybearded man in a wrecked station wagon has driven headlong into oncoming traffic, his attention shattered by his reverie, his daydream invoked by ogling her.

Her laugh is a rebellion of notes across the lightning. She turns and runs, her legs pumping and pumping; kneading the wet air. The obscured faces, this odd race called man, flash past her, more swiftly than the tumult of raindrops.

Home. She is as wet as if she had fur, like an animal. She strips shaking and laughing still. Then she walks into the bathroom. There are tracks on the floor. The towel is raindrenched and muddy. He has been here before her.

With/him-Dreaming:

She did not recognize this house. Whose house was it, this shack crumbling to gray ugly dust in a gray rain? She did not feel like herself either, standing in the crooked doorway, ragged and dusty as the dirt road wandering before her. Who lived here? She knew she must only be on a visit; but whose clothes were these, and what was she doing in them? What was she doing here, in nowheresville, in this ragged dump anyway?

She thought as she opened her mouth and stretched out her arms that she would call out a name, perhaps to question the ragged rain falling all around her. Instead she moaned, a primitive sound she had never made before, and fell to her knees on the mud dusty porch floor, her hands straining towards the rain. She felt caught on the moan, trapped. It sailed from her throat into the wailing wind.