Mia

 

Her awareness had not always been, but she could not remember how it had begun. It flitted around, taking the perspectives of many different things. Some things felt more like home than others, and her personality developed along with her preference for the different feelings. She was, in a sense, a colored spark; a pinpoint of consciousness, alive without a body in which to rest.

She inhabited stones for a while, moving on when the shape became too boring. The rocks were easy, but once she caught on to the dance of being a plant she was instantly hooked. It took a certain understanding of natural flow, but the rivers taught that easily enough, and she had loved being river stones the best. Small plants were her favorite now, bending gracefully in gentle breezes, sheltering under others when the storms came, and clinging tightly together under the earth to join in the consciousness of all. When they drew energy from the earth and air, they would put forth beautiful offerings in white and purple and red and sometimes numerous other colors. She loved the bright petals, and always wore them with gladness when they came.

She wanted to catch a chipmunk, or a bird of some kind, but they were too fast for her. Besides, she did not know how her awareness would fit against theirs'. Even in the plants she could feel a slight resistance. The plant's natural life force recognized the intruder and she had to be careful to match the dance in just the right way. Though the flowering ones always welcomed her awareness, she never stayed in a host for long. There was so much of the world to explore. With a thought she was on distant hilltops under cloud-studded skies, reeling from the sudden jump in place. Other times she burrowed down into small worlds near the ground that held just as much varied wonder as the sweeping open vistas.

One day she was a columbine; a red delicate dancer at the edge of a cliff. Other more common ephemerals danced around her on a narrow mossy ledge in the woods. Some distance below, the forest gave way abruptly to open rock and water, which stretched far out towards a shore also hilly and wooded. It had been a pleasant sunny morning, but as a breeze rose and ruffled the water below her ledge, she felt the urge to move along. She let the dance of the breeze pull her spark out of the bell of the columbine. The wind caught at it slightly, and it drifted right down to the edge of the water. She had been rivers before, dancing young streams and mature well-laden courses. She had felt the nature of their waters, but had never been something deeper. She wanted to be a lake. She wanted to know that stillness and depth. There was such a place nearby, one with a great deal of magnetic power.

In an instant she was in dark cold waters. Her awareness stretched out and she felt the vessel of the great lake; a long deep rift in the land. Its shoreline snaked around countless rocky curves and into rich muddy bays. Grand rivers fed its waters, flowing through metropolis and farm land, the whole mass moving steadily northward to, somewhere, the sea. Things lived and moved within her, and she held them in protective care, easing their way to gather nutrients from her bountiful waters. She was ancient and wise, an invisible natural goddess in plain sight.

When the sun began to rise, it varnished the surface of her lake with gold. The sheen shifted and glinted as gulls cried and heralded the busy shoreline cities to wake. If she had a face, she would smile, for this was a good feeling. It could not stay for very long, because her consciousness was not used to being stretched this far apart, but a little while longer would be fine. As she felt the filling being of the lake, she reflected. For a while now (she could not remember how long ago any of her memories were) she had wanted a name. A tone had come to her, a sort of mantra-chant, spoken in a dream state. The world, it seemed, was Gia, or something of that sort. She was an individual, perhaps the only true individual (she had no knowledge of any other spark like her). Therefore, her name would be Mia; the personal spark, the locus of awareness. She began to gather herself to slip into one of the smaller bays and felt secure in her decision. Mia was here and her and there was a whole world to explore. As she consolidated, she found a piece of solid matter that had not released from her being. It was a columbine petal, red and cup-shaped. In her transformation to the great lake she had not noticed pulling it with her, but now it floated on the water, dancing as her spark moved into the shallows of the bay.