Paradise is here - Day 51 of the steemitschool 100 day writing challenge by @d-pend

_{Image Source}

In the lazy morning hours, when sleep eludes leaving me soft and slow like molasses, I fall through the cracks of my armour. My hands play with moonlight, fingers fluttering like moths, dipping deep into the stream. Memory sings me songs of hundred year old beech trees and my feet moving swiftly over carpets of cool moss. Fireflies light the way to a freedom and happiness lost in the sands of my hourglass. I sway softly to the rhythm that becomes cocoon. Shielding me from a life and self I no longer recognise.

At the edge of the river my companions form out of the swirling fog, Luna the kind, George the brave and our feline brethren, now mere imprints left on a grieving heart that has seen better days. My fondness for them becomes the delicious chip in my enamel that I cannot resist probing with the tip of my tongue. My eyes recognise the mirrored trajectory of their voyage in the sleeping furry forms filling my bed.

As I slip through the hole in the fence between dreams and what we declare to be real, I become the bird soaring in flight, rejoicing in the endless reach of its kingdom. I am the squirrel jumping from treetop to treetop, celebrating every step and breath. I am the wolf howling, the tom cat serenading his beloved, the blue bird shielding her nest. I and my non human children, past and present, transform into a murder of crows, a school of fish, a heard of wild bison moving in unison, a bond that holds beyond the veil.

In the shifting tides between velvet night and budding dawn, I come to realise that despite the pain of my losses, paradise is here. It lays in the love we shared, the solitary miracle that so few are allowed to experience in a world that peddles so many counterfeit counterparts. It lays in the forest that has embedded itself in the essence of my being, blurring the lines between our end and our beginnings. Those who truly see the me behind the skin, will find its wild earthy scent hiding in the curls of my hair and the rustling of leaves just below their range of hearing in every one of my movements. Beyond this broken shell I am the wind, the seed of storm, immortal being running with my pack, my tribe, as we claim a star clad sky.

Writing notes:

For those who have gone before me, may we meet again …

_{(Image credit Dave Renike and a portrait of the fair jubilee made by myself turned into this here universal truth meme)}

_{Image Credit}

_{Image Credit}

_{art courtesy of @PegasusPhysics}

_{Image Credit}