From There to Here

From There to Here

By Anna Minor

Hot fire consumes me. Gold, bronze, and copper flames flicker in my mind’s eye. In a fright I awake. I am in a desert. The warm sun caresses my skin.

This cannot be right. I remember snow. I remember white snowflakes floating through the grey sky. I recall ice, transparent and bitter, everywhere. I remember the cold. It is an unexplainable cold that suffocates me and life. There was nothing but whiteness, like I was a single ink spot on an otherwise clean, blank page of paper.

Yet, the sun still shone, radiating heat. I was lying down, back to the ground face towards the bright sky.

“Where am I?” I whisper to myself, to the sun, to the desert

Then there was a shadow cast over me. I look up and over to see an elephant standing in front of me.

An elephant, only it was not a regular sort of elephant. It was an elephant on stilts, only the stilts were, in fact, the elephant’s legs.

“Where are you? You are here.” said the elephant, with a voice that sounded like a trumpet, his long nose pointing to me sprawled unto the sand.

“Yes, but where is here?” I inquire. For some reason my mind does not scream at me about going mad or about elephants not having the ability to speak. Of course elephants can speak, they just cannot speak human. If I can go to school and learn to speak Spanish how come elephants cannot learn to speak human? After all, I have heard that elephants have a good memory.

“Here is where you are.” Replied the elephant

To me this made perfect sense, but I remained confused. Elephants did not have stilt legs and elephants did not speak human. My mind would not grasp onto these thoughts so they floated on by, like snowflakes, melting away when they sunk in.

“How did I get here?” I ask, for this elephant apparently has all the answers.

“How did you get where?”

“How did I get where I am?”

“Oh, you were not always here?”

“No.” I stated to the elephant, I did not go into detail about snow, grey skies, or the horrible coldness of where I came from.

“Hmm...” said the elephant thoughtfully and continued with, “Well, how do you get from one place to the next? From here to there.”

“Walk” I responded, imagining the awful icy wind attacking my face.

“Well if you walk from here to there, it makes sense that you walked from there to here.”

“So how do I get back?”

“Well, if you walked from there to here you can walk from here to there.”

That is simple, why could I not figure that out? “Thank you.” I called to the elephant. I was tempted to ask if she was a heffalump, but I did not out of fear that I might offend her.

“You are very welcome.”

The elephant used her trunk as a trumpet and called to her pack. There was a few stilt legged, human-speaking elephants.

I wonder if they are on the endangered species list.

Thus I walked.

I trudged through the desert, the gold sand forming to my bare feet. I sing nonsense songs about sunshine and heffelumps and woozels, to the beat of my pounding heart and the thuds of my footsteps. The sun was better than the cold. I would not let my mind wander to my freezing memories, for just those ideas chilled my heart.

I march, I hike, I stride, I walk, I stroll, I trudge, I lumber, I plod, and I fall.

“Well, Miss, are you alright?” asks a lovely soprano voice.

I glance up to see a giraffe. I almost expected to see a woozel hovering around my face, but it was a giraffe way up high.

Giraffes normally have stilt legs, so that is nothing new. As well as if elephants can speak than why would giraffes not be able to? I had to look closer to realize that the Mohawk of hair that giraffes in the snowy, cold place I came from have are just hair whereas this giraffe possessed fire instead of hair.

I momentarily reach my hand up to my hair to ensure that it was not aflame. I touched it softly and hesitantly to make sure I did not burn my fingers. Nope, my hair was hair, not fire. Though fire hair would look pretty cool... wait, why is that giraffe staring at me? Oh, right, what was the question? Um...

“Miss, are you alright?” The giraffe repeats her original question, panicked by my non-response.

I thought about the giraffe’s polite inquiry and told her in a confident voice “No, I am not alright.”

“Oh dear” First heffalumps and woozels now this giraffe is starting to sound a lot like Piglet. “What is wrong?”

“I’m lost.” I state, a soft whimsical sound to my otherwise scratchy and dry voice.

“Your lost? Well where are you going?”

“I am going to where I was.”

“To where you were?”

“Yes, to where I was.”

“Well, you came from that way.” She said extending her long neck to point her in the opposite way of which I walked.

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Than why are you not going back?”

“Because, that is where I started in going back to where I came from, it is not where I am going back to. I do not know how to get back to the beginning.”

“How do you get from one place to another?”

“I walk” I state dully then add on “but I already tried to get back by walking and it didn’t work.”

“Where is there another way that you travel?”

I closed my eyes and felt the frosty wind blowing upon me, drowning in snow. My feet’s pitter-patter on the pavement is a fast pace. I am trying to escape from the coldness, I am going fast.

“Running” I told the giraffe. The giraffe nodded, her head bobbing high to low in a comical way as she says, excited, “Try that. Running may work.”

Walking was hard enough I thought, I thought it probable that running probably was near impossible. Yet I mustered up my remnants of strength and determination and thank the giraffire (which I have named the species of giraffe with the fiery mane that are added to the endangered species list in my mind along with the heffelumps and woozels) and sprint off.

I sprint, I race, I dash, I run, I gallop, I jog, I power walk, and I faint.

The sun blazed, the temperature was smoldering. The searing air sizzled and was difficult to breathe.

I sprint, I race, I dash, I run, I gallop, I jog, I power walk, and I faint.

“Miss, Miss” revives me, I hear the chorus of a trumpet and a soprano calling to me.

I push my hands against the sand to push myself up only to push the sand apart and my hands to slide away so that I go face down into the ground. I manage to attempt again, this time using my knees as well and pull myself up and into a remotely normal and comfortable position. I see the heffelump and giraffire staring down at me.

I struggled to take a few stinging shallow breathes and say to them, “Hola!”

They give me a quizzical look like I was mad. Well, I have to be a bit off, but... Oh, they must not speak Spanish. I guess it is too much to ask that weirdo animals learn more than to speak the human language dialect of English.

“Are you alright, Miss?” inquired the ever worried giraffire.

“I-I am” I took a shaky breathe, “Definitely not alright.”

“So, I take it you did not manage to get from here to there?” asked the heffelump.

“No, I tried to walk from here to there and only abortive and fell. I attempted to run from here to there and failed and fell as well.”

“Well, have you tried flying?” asked the heffelump in a tone that implied that her statement was obvious.

“I do not believe that I can fly.”

“Have you ever tried?”

I close my eyes and felt snow flying into my face and that darn coldness.

“I think so.”

“Well, it never would hurt to try again.” said the giraffire.

I nodded to the two. I sprint and leaped.

I am soaring, I am flying, I am fluttering, and I am falling.

For a moment I thought I was flying but, no, I was falling.

Yes, it would hurt trying to fly again. Ouch

“Maybe you fell here.” said the giraffire meekly.

“What” I responded softly

“Well you fell after walking, running, and flying, right?”

A chilly breeze hit me in the middle of the desert.

I remember the snow falling softly, then harder. The snow fall hammered down upon me. The wind pushed against me, slapping what little exposed skin that it could reach. I remember the coldness. I remember slipping and falling. I remember falling and then falling asleep.

Then it was the coldness, it was the vast white that covered the place. This is the place that I came from. I was awake, but cold, and lost. I was under the snow.

“Where are you?” called the strong voice of my father.

“Baby, where are you?” I heard my mother yell.

“I’m here!” I screamed, my voice weak and quiet, but they heard me.