TERRA
INCOGNITA
MONICA T. S. FLORES
The water still flowed as it always did.
I rode my mer-mares from Australis, through the Sea of Java, past Buglas and on to Mindore.
Warriors swam beside me, holding tridents aloft, singing songs I once knew in my youth. Sunlight shone in their wake, in my dreaming.
Eons ago, colonizers attacked, so I aimed my Trident to blast at their flotilla in the sky. I was successful, and their ship trailed fire and fell into the ocean, so they came for me.
I could not evade capture. I’m reduced now to my digital form.
I’m shelved, held captive in zeros and ones. Bits and bytes cross my memories.
I see my child’s eyes, their beautiful face turning to ash.
I hear my spouse ’ s entreaties when light consumes them, when their voice cuts out mid-scream.
“You’re burning my harvest to dust!”
I shouted, when they hauled up my body for extraction.
“You’re boiling my well into vapor!”
I groaned, when they removed my heart, and sloughed off my skin, and sluiced my consciousness into a pod.
Put ’ em in a ’cycle, they said. They want to erase my existence. I’m to forget their invasion, forget their weapons, clear the horror of their faces from my memory. I’m to forget my dwelling-place in flames. The invaders have gone now, but I am trying to remember. I witness dusk and dawn, identify shifting stars, watch the moon traversing night. Mathematics lasts forever, so I find comfort in its physical form: I count whorls in seashells, and watch the waves as they break into shore.
I find furred beings on four legs, who grunt in brusque, guttural voices. Their young ones if they’re brave come to me, so I teach them to walk upright and talk.
I show them swimming and hunting. I teach them how to fish, and sing sea-chants to their offspring. I show them how to create shelter. Their children, and their children’s children, grow up hairless and strong.
enchanted, They call me engkanto, for my hair stays black, and my forehead unlined, and I stand tall through twenty of their generations.
Here and now, I prod their hearts— and the power their creativity generates runs down.
lest inertia sets in, I watch them sleeping, and they nuzzle while at rest, so I remember my spouse.
At daybreak, their rooster crows, and they wake noisy, so I forget my past for a while.
They’re rising through their levels.
One day, they’ll go higher.
Perhaps they’ll find me, and remake me, or call me by a different name.
While they witnessed me riding, they shouted,
They called out, Bless us, Amanikable! And whooped as they lifted their tridents.
Thy
will be done!
they yelled. I wondered at their awakening. I wished them to remain strong, so I advanced with them through the waters.
The cycle continued.
COPYRIGHT MONICA T. S. FLORES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
COVER BY CILLIAN PLAMP
PHOTO BY ROHIT CHOUDHARI
PHOTO BY IVANA CAJINA