A GATHERING OF MOONS — P01E06
The Bear
Another dream
--
The bear lay on its side, its eyes dull, its fur matted and patchy. Everything about it felt hopeless.
Especially in dreams, Tabetha could feel another’s emotions. She was drowning in the bear’s hopelessness.
She could also sense that this BEAR was a composite of many. A coming together of multiple, miserable realities.
In one, it lay on its side, one foot caught in the jaws of a great trap. Bone was visible even in the greyness of dream.
In another, it was caged and a tube flowed from its belly, trailing off into the darkness beyond her awareness.
In yet another, she could sense its hunger despite a belly full of human refuse.
She felt herself begin to cry, releasing a little of the fullness of its misery.
She had become the bear now, could feel the metal jaws cutting into her left hind leg. The confines of a cage. The tube draining her life force. The plastic in her belly.
Suddenly, too, she felt a tug on an iron ring that pierced her muzzle, circled through her right nostril, and held her mouth open as though in perpetual surprise. She felt the eyes of an audience on her, intent only on its own pleasure. And, then, she heard a command to dance and felt herself suddenly rise up her hind legs — heard the familiar jangling of bells that encircled her waist.
She’d become a dancing bear.
A spectacle of herself.
The damaged foot throbbed and ached and bled into the yellow sand. The tube that stole her precious bile snaked about her as she moved, and the stinking, rotting garbage, the only food the world had left for her to eat, became her stage.
Tabetha wanted to be released from the dream, but she could not rise to the surface of consciousness; she could not free herself from the nightmare any more than the bear could free itself from its myriad of living hells.
And, because Tabetha could not comprehend, even with what she had experienced on THE SHIP, how anyone or anything could allow another being to suffer in the way this bear was suffering, she wanted to kill the bear now. It was the only way.
Mercy killing, Runkel called it.
Releasing something from suffering.
And so, she settled her awareness on her breath, preparing to imagine slitting its throat.
She allowed herself to quiet her panic now and simply be in the dream — completely and naturally. No fighting.
For the bear no longer fought; it simply was and so she entered its mind — moved past the fire and smoke of its emotions of anger and fear, of sadness and grief, to the very ashes of its hopelessness, and entered the cells of its memory, memories that went beyond its current misery, past the moment of injury.
And, suddenly, she breathed clean air; felt the lushness of life explode around her.
She smelt the smell of earth and undergrowth rise up and a tree exploded, full-grown, from the dark, rich soil, and the bear’s soul began to sing with joy. Other souls joined her song until a great multitude of songs joined together like a great flowing river and the air vibrated with life and potential and the bear in whose consciousness Tabetha travelled rolled onto the ground rubbing its great black body in the dampness of the leaves of ground plants, and rejoiced, its paws paddling the air in sweet release.
Tabetha herself felt relief as though she too had been freed, and she rejoiced in the beauty of the bear’s homeland, the cleanness and purity of its air, water and earth, in the clearness of its sun and sky.
As the bear returned to its true form, Tabetha felt herself return to consciousness.
As she rose to the surface of the dream, she brought with her the sounds of grubs moving beneath mulch, the scent of a salamander burrowed in the dark, deep earth, and the knowledge of where she needed to go.
To keep up with this story and stay in the loop, please read about The Tabetha Project and follow this publication.
