I dreamed last night our three characters were walking the hills, and suddenly found ourselves quite in the middle of a grassy field, deep green, with about 24 white and black tigers. We could not just leave, we had to figure a way out. The chief tigers asked what we were doing there. No sudden moves, no movement toward escape, we were trapped, but not hopeless. On a slight rise to the left, we could see some handrails, or a fence, and some people crouched, watching. "And you won't even help us," I called to them. The dream pretty much ended there.

I did not go to the event because I was afraid.

Did we become entangled in that field, and is it this field where your character is now arriving in the narrative?

I begin the narrative here.

Sept. 12, 2008

The story so far confused me to no end, yet we forge on.

Such summer days must not be ignored, or passed thought casually. The the whole time she was there, Esther was in this state of heightened appreciation, aware of everything going on around her.

The canopied walks were not the only art in public places there, Esther wanted us to know - many courtyards and balconies had beautiful moving pictures, and just about every corridor had a distinctive design, something to distinguish it from others, though the basic codes of design in general there eluded Esther.

Nothing would have prepared anyone for these schemes - and none of the materials used were familiar to Esther, or to Sarah, and none of the methods of depiction seemed related to anything she's seen before.

Music as we know it is unknown, at least, written music. Sound itself is pervasive there, in most places, but it isn't music, exactly, but a part, she was certain, of the atmosphere of any particular corridor, or balcony, or room.

"Parts of the city were actually quite noisy, and some utterly silent," said Esther. There were different sounds at different times too, and at night a kind of low humming or buzzing pervaded the whole place. "I think it helped them sleep, to be honest, and they slept a long time - 16 hours or more."

Those nights were perhaps the strangest, most alienating times for Esther - when the city went to sleep, it really went to sleep. "I think very few stayed awake during the long night, and those who did were in a kind of half-wakefulness, half-sleep state, sleepwalking, almost, but not dreaming, I think."

Sarah said nothing, but appeared deep in thought. Esther had expected her to add some insight to the sleeping/waking state, but she stayed silent, and appeared likely to remain so for some time.

"I went out into the city, sometimes after sleeping about half the night. I was scared, of course, but so curious. The first time was after my friend showed me the abduction room." In 5 hours out and about the city that night, Esther had seen only 6 others, drifting down a corridor, or standing motionless on the northernmost balcony, peering across the forest.

"The one gazing northward, I swear it was one of the presiders at the hearing, and from far away he seemed to glimpse me down below, outside the canopied walk."

Esther thought the norther canopy was somewhat out of place - it looked like a long orange-red balloon, a candy-coloured tube. Inside of it, however, at night, there was nothing to see, as far as she could see.

"I went very close to the covering, and yes, there was a kind of reticent pattern there, but now it appeared the pattern was many layers deep. Looking at it, I started feeling as if I were falling sideways."

She made a note to revisit it in daylight.

"I went back inside the city then, but I immediately got completely lost, for the only time that I was there."

Her fear was not for what could happen, fear of the residents, fear of being without a sense of location, but a real apprehension that she could easily stumble upon something that would reveal a hitherto hidden darkness in the city, a disappointment, a weaknesss, a buried, terrible secret, which she would discover precisely because she was such an outsider.

"It sounds a little like the feeling we get when we vote for someone, and we hope they don't reveal themselves to be deeply corrupt," I said.

Esther smiled. Sarah remained silent.

Sept. 13, 2008
we were back in St. Jacob's, in Esther's house by the river. We could not part just yet.

"Listen," said Sarah, "I have a feeling we won't be together much longer, something is changing. I hope we can get this done soon."

It was late September and the hills and valleys were a strikingly beautiful orange, red and yellow.

"I think we must be finished by the end of the year," added Sarah. "What is coming to me now is that for all of the time I was unconscious, something else was moving in me - I was not simply a sleeping translation unit. All my life I've moved in great circles, coming back to certain points again and again. The circle has been broken," Sarah sighed. Sarah and I were walking to the market on a gorgeous Saturday morning, as the sky seemed to announce great blue peace around us. "Will you stay with Esther?" she asked me.

This idea had also been on my mind, but there was no answering it. The future had become, since their return, an utter mystery, a path to nowhere.

"Perhaps not," I said, and left the rest unspoken.

We loved Esther's house because it was separate, isolated enough from the big world. One could liver there well and never really have to venture far.

We decided to take a trip, just for a few days, to Halifax. Sarah had a friend there, I had lived there in my early 20s for a year, and Esther had wanted for some time to visit her hometown.

Stymied. No way forward. What if Esther had stopped at the foot of those hills, once past the dark red forest? She would not have met the stranger, would not have experienced what eventually became her most difficult memories of the place.

I tried to write about this.

"All was chatter, a kind of noise, implications of future reckoning, which occasionally brought us fullstop looking over the fields, and beyond them, what was left of the great forests. Those few strands of trees remained, not entirely denatured, as echoes of the vanished green, and saddened us consequently.

'All was chatter and noise, feat, the passing of green Earth - gone green we greive for!"

I tried and failed to write about this.

At night, Esther's house is like a sad song of absence, every little thing, every smell, every colour, and all the shapes, singing, mourning.