4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Communion and Combustion
The river has been calling Paul's name since he arrived—a whisper curling around his thoughts like fingers through hair. When he follows it downstream and discovers a hidden lagoon, the water offers something he didn't know he needed: permission. Permission to feel. Permission to surrender. Permission to become someone other than the man he's been performing for thirty-five years. The return to reality will be considerably less graceful.
Paul tells himself he's just going for a swim. Just escaping Jamie's presence for a few minutes. Just answering the body's simple need to be clean and cool and temporarily free of the dust that coats everything in this world.
The lagoon has other ideas.
Hidden at the river's bend, fed by a gentle break in the current, it waits for him with water so clear he can count every stone on the bottom. No fish. No insects. No algae or plants or evidence that anything has ever lived in its pristine depths. Just stillness, and an invitation he can't refuse.
What happens when Paul slips beneath the surface isn't bathing. It's transformation. The water seems almost sentient, whispering words that bypass his ears entirely, touching places that haven't been touched in years. Layers of restraint dissolve. The careful, controlled man he's been pretending to be cracks open, and something raw emerges gasping into the light.
The return to camp brings him back to earth with comic brutality—panic about smoke that turns out to be Jamie's campfire, observations about underwear choices he'll never voice aloud, and a towel that catches fire while he's distracted.
