Memories

No, it's not an hallucination.

From time to time, I wake up suddenly in my loft known as the Red Room, startled and confused, sweating profusely as the sun starts its ascension on the horizon.

At first glance, all seems calm on our small moon. The local residents are fast asleep. TD's boudoir lamp is sometimes on. A neighbor forgets to turn off his radio: I hear the faint crackling sound lost in the cold night air. I know AlisonLynn is probably asleep on the porch, after a long night working at the bar. Visitors have left long ago and returned home, except for the occasional newbie lost in space or looking for some sort of a good time. Nothing is very different from the usual.

And then it hits me.

Waves of the scent crashes on me. It engulfs my loft, penetrating the bricked walls of Lauralai's small building where I live, the air becoming thick with it. The perfume cascading, rolling down the streets of Blackburn, pungent and sweet: the smell of hibiscus.

I wake up in a shout. No, I'm not hallucinating. I feel it.

Most people of some curiosity or intelligence know that Blackburne's land was once a beautiful, leafy, wonderful place, known and enjoyed for its rivers, forests and green hills. Animals, birds and fish thrived here. The air was clean. The water, crystal clear.

And then the Alliance came. The war forever altering the landscape. Destruction destructed the domain. Loss, radioactivity, dry and raw land. Elders and people present at the time have talked about it. TransNational Archives have rooms full of documented material of the Barbarian Era. Denial is not an avenue here. History is the Truth.

So what is this nice smell that comes in a rush, when Life is unconscious, at Blackburne?

I don't know. I am not a scientist. I like dancing, wine, poetry, laughter. I am a disciple of Bacchus not Einstein. But my typist - Bless her soul - feels redeemed.

As a young child, she told her "Maman", that contrary to ordinary beliefs, rock formations have a soul. They feel and they remember, not like homo sapiens, but still, they are not just quartz and granite and formidable chemistry organized in such a way. Maman was not amused and turned the volume up on the Bugs Bunny cartoon praying this would all pass come adolescence.

So if my typist's theory has any value, which I totally find rational, this is what goes on certain nights on Blackburne.

For a few minutes, the moon remembers. It recalls a piece of Time, of what used to be long ago. It shouts the fragrance of Life as it was. It recalls. Let it all remind us the importance of memories. Nothing really dies.

It just fall asleep.

For a while.