Odysseys of Ohia

Ohia

Three thousand and eleven days, it's been. Three thousand and eleven days since I was plunged into darkness. Three thousand and eleven days of no sounds but for my breaths, the guard's boots, and the occasional crunch of cement meeting knuckle. 

Or at least, I think it's been three thousand and eleven days. Three thousand and eleven meals I've had brought to me - that much I knew. Three thousand and eleven stale bread rolls. Three thousand and eleven bitter mashed potatoes. 

Nine hundred and forty-six pieces of mangled leather they called meat. 

I stare at the door, its edges lined with rails of bright light. Every now and then, the light flickers, and I can almost feel the breeze brushing the trees, its shadows dancing in the moonlight across the mossy floor. But the sound of footsteps prevails my imagination and I am again in the cell, shamefully romanticizing a guard's passing shadow. 

Three thousand and eleven restless, freezing sleeps. Before here, the cold had never bothered me much - though that's easy to say when I had more than rags to cover me. I had always enjoyed winter and its serenity. The trees are bare, their branches bone-like; and the skies are quiet, empty. There's an eeriness to it, I won't deny. But I know that the animals, and even the trees themselves, are merely asleep. Beneath rocks, hidden in trunks, or burrowed in the ground, the earth sleeps; hibernating, regenerating. 

Sometimes I tell myself that's what this is; hibernation. I'm restoring my energy, building up my nutrients and resources for the flowers I'll bloom in Promrera, enveloping the earth in pollen and seedlings, restoring the land. 

But then the walls weep with a black ooze, smelling of what I can only describe as death, and the ruse becomes too hard for even me to continue. 

Three thousand and eleven days. How many more awaited me here?  I wondered, not for the first time. Not because I thought I would escape this place. Eight hundred and eleven days I had believed I would  get out eventually. Another hundred and four before I gave up hope entirely and began collecting and braiding mangled leather and fashioning them into a rope so that when I did eventually leave this place, it would be my  choice. 

That choice was shortly taken from me. 

I lie on an area of cement I consider my sleeping quarters, and stare up at the ceiling. 

I am grateful for the darkness. Sometimes the night is more alive than the day, bringing life to our subconscious, dreams and imagination. When I stare long enough at the ceiling, and my eyes struggle to stay focused in the lack of light, I see colours - green, red, blue and white - and I see shapes, flashing speckles, like stars, or lines and flashes, dancing like the motions of a rogue leaf hitching a ride on the wind. 

I start to make out the sturdy figure of a tree in the grey, shaped by the billions of flashing specks that swell and then retreat, as if it were breathing. I make out the familiar curves of its branches, its trunk that had forked at the base, and then changed its mind, intertwining back together. I can almost see the carefully placed boulders surrounding its roots when the crunch of bone meeting bone awakens me. 

I leap up, digging my feet into the cement for balance, fists ready. I stare at the glowing rectangle and strain my ears, but no sound awaits me. It's silent, perhaps more silent than before. 

But I know what I heard. 

Minutes pass, I think. I have not moved, my muscles still tensed, albeit a little less, yet not even so much as the flicker of a passing shadow greets me. I am alone. I've been alone for three thousand and eleven days. And yet, I am overwhelmed with disappointment. For what, I am not sure.