The Hidden Pool of Well Being

Let's see, the year must be 1993, walking home from the neighborhood lake... we all went there to escape, once in a while, and called it lovingly, "the pond."

I thought I had been alone, till I noticed these forms, damp, trailing behind me as if just having emerged from a swamp... They followed me with persistence. I squinted against the setting sun just beyond. They stalked me; gawking and baulking from a distance.

I said loudly, "Hey you, have we all met?" They paused a moment. Liquid ambiguity in their eyes flashed momentarily green, brown, blue; and read as if, "not yet, not yet," though one shook a head North and South, the other East and West, while the middle one just looked out straight ahead. We stood like that for a moment, until I turned to go. I went up a hill, round a bend, being so sure this would be the end. But no sooner did I make it to our ravine, then curiosity overtook me and I had to cast a look... they were there, all three, still hounding me...

They were closer now and had as if a name tag. Otherwise they were so similar in vagueness and compact mystery. Cloaked, and coming closer. One was older, that was +01E; and the middle one was my age, as if, that was 0E; and the most immature, to the right, was -01E...  E that puzzled me. I stopped, but they did not... the older one trailed behind; the middle one joined me side by side; and the youngest took to marching before us like a guide...

Who were these abstracts? I turned to the E next to me and peered into the darkened hood obscuring the face in shadows; I gasped... there was as if an ever changing display of features of those I know... I turned to look back, squinting again at the one who was fading further apart. I could no longer hope to see into the face, but drew my breath at the body, which morphed into an array of silhouettes of those who I had encountered before. A shiver went through my soul and I began to wonder at the meaning of it, when suddenly the one out front began humming in an assortment of voices, some known to me, but most that I didn't quite recognize. Then laughing, weeping, singing, shouting, the youngest spun round like a lunatic... spinning around and around with the hood slipping partly down. Stopping us in our track. The face looked a lot like me. I blinked, and suddenly we were just silently continuing along.

We had arrived. Our guide oddly had already passed inside; the face could be seen for a brief instant reflected in the nearest window. My side companion slipped down along the siding, as if to sit hunched in the dark by the door as I fumbled with the latch-key. The one behind hovered just barely, like a memory. I opened up, finally, reassured despite the pounding of my heart, that there was no one but me there; not inside, nor out... and I drew the new bolt across the old paint-chipped back door. I was home... and it no longer matter if anyone else had the key.

#HiddenPoolofWellBeing #Challenge

<font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="silver">01.30.2018</font>