nadiathesaint | The preserve and into the spirit plane, Saturday

Nadia had spent much of the night pacing back and forth across the circle. Partially to wake up her left foot, which kept falling asleep on her, partially just to keep warm as it had gotten quite cold by around 4 am, and partially just to keep herself from falling asleep.

Now, though, she was seated again. Her hunger, overnight, had grown from an inconvenience to almost making her stomach hurt. Her throat was dry, and her body was stiff and aching from walking for most of yesterday.

It was hard to believe, looking back, that she'd ever managed five years on the street, when the hunger pains, the aching body, and the cold and lack of sleep were things she dealt with every day. Life in Fandom had made her somewhat soft, she supposed. She'd grown too used to eating regularly, sleeping on a mattress, and central heating.

Still, she was determined to do this, and to do it right, so she sat throughout the morning and into the afternoon, watching the patterns the sunlight etched across the water and listening to the sounds of the preserve.

After several hours, she became aware of another sound, behind her and to her left, the sound of water rushing over rocks, and of footsteps through the pine needles.

"Dammit, Walter, I told you not to come until tomorrow," she said, turning to look.

It wasn't Walter. She caught a glimpse of an old man in robes, then all she saw was trees.

She turned back to the water for a moment, but her curiosity won out, and she stood. She moved easily, now, the aching and cold seeming to vanish with the fluid motion of standing.

She didn't notice that she left her body behind with the movement.

The alpaca wool poncho transformed as she stood, becoming not so much like wool as like . . . feathers. Damp, sleek, and shining gently in the afternoon sun. She didn't notice this, either, or rather, it didn't register as being strange. Her hair was damp as well, resembling the dark feathers that ran down her arms and across her chest and back. As she spread her arms and stretched, the poncho moved with her, creating the illusion, for a moment, that she had wings. An outside observer, were they able to see into the mystical mists past her seated body and to the spirit that had risen out of it, might have seen a figure of a woman, shrouded in feathers and fire, silhouetted against the sparkling water that stretched out in front of her. A phoenix rising from an ashen body.

Not that there was anyone to see it.

Nadia dropped her arms and started walking. The circle seemed to have stretched out and grown, encompassing much more of the landscape, and she walked for what seemed like miles without ever leaving its borders. She entered into the woods and found a stream, followed its winding path amongst the trees, and looked for the old man she had seen.

"Hey, toots," a voice said.

She turned. It wasn't the old man, it was another, a man in his late thirties or early forties, with dark, slick hair, heavy eyebrows and strange, protruding lips. His eyes were solid black, seemingly made entirely of pupil without iris, and he turned his unnerving, round gaze on her with a quirk of those lips.

"Please don't call me that," she said.

"Call you what, toots?"

"That." Was this man an idiot?

"Hey, you can't think like that about your spirit guide!" The man pressed a hand to his chest, his long fingers arcing downward as though pulled by gravity.

"You're my spirit guide?" She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"Damn right, I am. And a good one, too. You lucked out."

"You don't look like a spirit guide."

"Don't I? Look closer, toots. Pay special attention to the feet. A thing can change its shape, but eyes and feet, they always tell."

Nadia frowned, but looked down. The man's feet were bare, tinged gray, and webbed. As she raised her eyes again, she began to realize that his hair was not hair, but a crown of feathers. His lips weren't protruding. He didn't, in fact, have lips, just a long, black bill. His curved, drooping fingers weren't fingers, but feathers, the end feathers of a long, luxurious wing.

"You're duck!"

"A duck, she says," Duck said. "Toots, I ain't just a duck. I'm every duck. At the moment, I'm an American black duck, if you want to get into the ornithology of it." He puffed up his chest feathers proudly. Nadia shook her head.

"My spirit animal is a duck?"

"Damn right, toots! And you ought to be proud of that fact! There ain't no other creature quite like a duck on this earth!"

"There's lots of creatures like ducks. Geese, for instance."

"I said quite like a duck, and geese ain't even close. Bunch a big bullies are what geese are. You gonna listen to what I've got to say to you, or what?"

"Well, I don't know. I was looking for the old man I saw. The one in the robes."

Duck sighed and started waddling along upstream. "Follow me."

Nadia did.

"So," Duck asked, after they'd been walking for some time. "What's so important that you had to rouse your spirit guide and near starve and freeze yourself out here to find out?"

"I'm really just looking for the old man," Nadia complained. "But if you must know, I've been falling asleep. And medicine can't explain it. I think it might have to do with--"

"The dreams, yeah. I know."

"Then why'd you ask?"

Duck shrugged. "Wanted to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, so the saying goes. Can't tell ya nothing if you don't ask it, see, so I couldn't tell you about that old man, or the dreams, or the door at the end of the hall without you expressing your concerns."

"The door?" Nadia stopped, though Duck was still waddling on. "What do you know about that door? I don't even remember the door, not usually. What does it have to do with anything?!"

"Green light, right? Big old solid door at the end of your hallway, opposite side of the big old fancy door that leads to the waking world. I'm your spirit guide. I have to know these things, it's my job." Duck stopped, sighed, and turned. "You coming, or what? I'm trying to give you good guidance here, and you're wandering off. No wonder you're having those metaphysical somniacal difficulties."

Nadia rolled her eyes and started walking again. Duck nodded and restarted his waddle and babble.

"Right then. So you find this big door spillin' green light at the end of the hallway of your mind, and what do you do, toots? Do you ask for help with something you don't understand? Do you leave well enough alone? No. You don't. You have to go and touch the damned thing and open it wider. You're a damned fool, you know, a real insult to ducks everywhere. And trust me, toots, I know from ducks. I'm Duck, you see. They're all me." He shot her a glance. "You're me."

"So you're a part of me? Like the door?"

"Got it backwards, toots."

"But you just said--"

"I know what I just said. I was listening. Look, just 'cause something is one thing, don't mean that one thing is something, you follow?"

Nadia thought for a moment. ". . . No."

Duck sighed. "Look, what is a duck?"

". . . a bird?"

"That's right, a duck is a bird. A duck is the best bird, in fact, but we'll get into that, later. Is a bird a duck?"

"What?"

"Is. A. Bird. A. Duck?" Duck said.

"No. Of course not. Some birds are sparrows, or turkeys, or--"

"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to list all the damned birds. So there you go."

"I still don't get it."

"Lordy, toots, what do I got to do, draw ya a diagram?" Duck stopped ahead of her and grabbed her shoulders with his feathery fingers. "Look. All ducks are me, right?"

"That's what you keep saying,"

"You, metaphorically speakin', are a duck, yes?"

"Um,"

"So, you're me. But I ain't you. Just like all ducks is birds, but not all birds is ducks."

Nadia was completely lost. She just kind of nodded.

"Right, well, it wasn't that important, anyway." Duck turned and started walking again. "Not what we're really here to do, is it."

"I'm here to find that old man," Nadia said.

Duck turned on her again. "The old man, the old man, stop talking about the old man! Seems to me this whole problem came from that damned old man and people tryin' to find him. So forget about the old man and listen to Duck for a moment, alright?"

Nadia nodded dumbly. They started walking again.

After a few yards, she couldn't keep it in. "So the old man was Rambaldi?"

Duck spat. He actually pursed his bill, turned, and hocked a big fat loogie into the foliage. "Don't you say that name around me again. I hate that guy. So full of himself. We'll just call him Old Man, okay? Got no use for names around here, anyway."

"Um, okay. . . ." They walked. "But the old man was . . . him, right?"

"Yes, Old Man is him. Old Man is a right bastard, and shouldn't even be here, but you had to go and crack open that damned door. Ah, here we go." Duck waddled to a stop next to a formation of rocks on the hill. "Right. Look here. What is this?"

Nadia crouched down and looked closer. Water was spilling from the rocks, here, not flowing over them like they did further down stream. In fact, there was no stream, above this point. "It's a spring."

"Right. Also, it's a birth. Birth of what? Birth of a stream, which grows into a creek, then a river, then, eventually, what happens to it?"

"It . . . joins the ocean."

"Right again. Now you're showing your ducky cleverness. Good to see you ain't going to insult us any more." Duck walked up above the spring, then started downstream on the other side. Nadia followed. "So," he said. "The spring is birth. The stream is childhood. Creek, teenagerhood. River, adulthood. What does that make the ocean?"

Nadia thought about this for quite awhile, so that they had nearly reached "teenagerhood" along the path of water before she answered. "Death?"

"Of a sorts, yeah. It ain't a stream, creek, or river, no more. Don't even look like one. Water isn't gone, though, is it. Just joined lots and lots of other water." Duck waddled on. "Look down into the water. What's that you see?"

Nadia looked. "Fish."

"Righto. What're the fish, d'ya think?"

Nadia thought, watching the fish swim. ". . . I have no idea."

Duck looked at her thoughtfully for a long moment before nodding. "That's okay. I think you're gettin' our metaphor here wrong. The stream ain't a life. Not the kind you're thinkin' of. It ain't a human life. Ain't even a duck life. The stream is a culture-life. Planet-life. Universe-life. It's all life, or rather, the place where the life comes together. It's time, you see. Somethin' starts at the top, works its way down. Like a fish. So. What's a fish, then?"

Nadia thought. "Human life?"

"Gold star!" Duck announced, hopping happily and flapping his wings. "Them fishes are your basic, average, ordinary human life. Fish swims along the time stream, like it ought to, one direction, looking for mates, seein' only what's just ahead of it, remembering only what's just passed behind it, lookin' just at the now."

A large fish jumped from the water, leaping its way in the wrong direction. Duck scowled.

"Well, most fishes do, anyway. You got your upstarts like Salmon in every group."

Nadia smiled faintly. She was pretty sure she knew a couple of salmon. In fact, Fandom seemed an island populated by them.

"Right, anyway, don't get all smug yet, toots, we only just begun our little metaphor, here." Duck started walking the stream again. "So, Fish is Man, Man is Fish. But you, toots, you ain't Fish. You're Duck. And Old Man, he ain't Fish, and he ain't Duck. He's somethin' else."

"What?"

"Look up, toots."

Nadia looked up. A grizzled looking falcon circled overhead, watching the water and the fish within it.

"That's right, toots, he's Falcon. What separates Fish from Falcon?"

Nadia pushed her hands into her pockets, watching the falcon swoop and soar. "Falcons fly?"

"Right. Falcons fly. Fish swim. So, Fish sees only the river just ahead of him. He don't know what rapids and such are going to come along further down the road. He can guess, he can imagine, but he can't see it, and he can't know it, 'cause he's in it, right then, and always, swimming along and getting pushed by the currents. Falcon, though, well, Falcon can see the whole river, spring to ocean, if he wants. Falcon can fly one end to the other, can stop along the way and examine one part real close . . . but he can't see what Fish sees. He only sees the surface, the top of the rapids. He can't explore when the river goes real deep. He can't get in along the way and swim with Fish, because he ain't built like that."

Nadia was beginning to get it. Rambaldi could see the future and the past, but he wasn't a part of those things. He only watched from the outside.

The falcon swooped down, caught one of the fish and flew off.

"Falcon's a right nasty dickhead, is what Falcon is," Duck commented. "He thinks he's all cool 'cause he can see things from the air and Fish can't. He doesn't seem much to care that he can't see anything from the water, like Fish does. And that," He puffed up his feathers again. "That's what makes Duck so damned cool."

"Yeah, you lost me again."

Duck sighed. "Okay, I'll show you." He waddled toward the water, then looked up at her. "Okay, we can't have this. You've got to go duck on me."

"Huh?"

Duck rolled his eyes. "Look at you. You've got arms and people feet. You're not going to use those in a minute, so get rid of them."

Nadia boggled. "I don't know how." Duck scurried up on his little duckish legs and bit her hard on the shin. "Ow! Dios, what the hell?"

"Look at yourself, toots. See those feathers you got on you? Use 'em. Don't think like Man, think like Duck. You got it in you, and this is the spirit plane so you got no constraints biologically. Think Duck, be Duck, and get your ass in the water."

Yeah, like it could possibly be that easy. Nadia tucked her hands into her feathered poncho and pouted. Stupid Duck, couldn't he just tell her something, without making it a huge metaphor? She crouched down, folded her arms against her sides, and sulked.

"Okay, now you've got it."

"Huh?" Nadia looked up at Duck. He was duck shaped, not people shaped the way he was sometimes. But she was looking up at him.

The hell?

She stretched out her arms, and noticed they weren't arms any more. She stepped forward and caught sight of her foot. It was webbed.

She was a duck.

Holy crap.

"Don't just sit there and boggle all day, we got things to do, stuff to see. Let's get movin', toots." Duck flapped his wings and landed on the surface of the water. Nadia followed suit, boggling at the way she floated easily. She twirled a foot in the water and spun. She twirled her other foot, and spun the other way.

She could do this for hours, and be perfectly entertained with the "zomg, I'm twirling on the water!" but Duck had other plans.

"Right, toots, what do you see?"

Nadia looked around. "The river."

Duck sighed. "Right, okay, whatever, don't get all poetic on me or nothin. . . . Stick your head under. Then tell me what you see."

Nadia gave Duck a look that clearly read, in Duckese, that she thought he was crazy, but she did it, dunking her head into the water and looking about. The fish stared blithely back at her and swum along. She looked up stream and watched the fish swim through the currents, around rocks and underwater plants. She looked the other way, and saw the water starting to roil about around larger rocks, into a rapid. She pulled her head out.

"You saw it, right?" Duck nodded, pleased. "You saw what the fish see, how the fish see it."

". . . Yeah. I did."

"That's how you spent most of your life. For awhile, you even thought you were a fish, swimming along with them. But then, one day, you happened to look up. And you saw Falcon. You saw the air. And that's when you did this." Duck rose most of the way out of the water, flapping his wings around to shake the water off, then took off into the air.

Nadia watched him from the water for a moment. Well, if she was a duck, she could do that, too, couldn't she.

And then she was in the air. Flying.

If she thought twirling ducklike in the water was cool, well then this was downright amazing.

"I'm flying!"

"Uh huh," Duck smiled a duckish, benevolent smile. "Just like Falcon, right? If we go that way, we'll find the spring. That other way, we'll see the rest of the river, where it breaks off into other rivers, where it joins bigger rivers, all the way to the ocean."

The ocean. The future. The dreams.

It all connected.

She was a duck.

And then she was standing on the bank of the river again, people shaped, but feathery, eyes wide and a grin on her face.

Duck stood next to her, also people shaped, and put one feathery hand on her shoulder. "You see?"

"I . . . yeah. Yeah, I do."

"That's my girl."

"But . . ." she turned to face him. "Why am I duck? Why am I not a fish, or a falcon, or a salmon, or even, I don't know, a bear that eats the fish?"

"Does it matter?"

"Did Ra--did Old Man make me one?"

"Nah. He just saw that you were and wrote it down so other people would know, too. The fish, sometimes they know they're missing something. They can't understand Falcon because he can't understand them. But Duck sees both worlds. Duck can interpret Falcon for Fish. Duck could tell Falcon what Fish thought of him messing with their lives, too, but Falcon doesn't like to listen."

Nadia nodded slowly, looking at the river, the fish, the falcon, and thinking about how she could travel between them, here, at least, whenever she wanted.

"Thing is," Duck said at length. "Duck's gotta fly, sometimes. Prefer's sitting on the water, relaxing and communing with the fish. Life's easier that way. But sometimes, Duck has to get into the air and see what's what. That's what the dreams are. The door lets you sit on the water, instead of spending all your time up in the air like Falcon. Opening the door . . . is like letting in a big wind that lifts you up when you're not expecting it. Closing the door ain't easy, because you've got currents of wind and water trying to get through. That's why it's got to be so big and thick."

"Um, I think you lost the river metaphor."

"Yeah, it happens."

"How do I close the door?"

"You ask me to help."

"Will you help me?"

Duck smiled. He really was kind of cute, in an old guy that's actually a duck kind of way. "Sure thing, toots. Let's go."

Nadia started in a direction. She didn't know how she knew it was the way to go, but she did. Then she paused. "We . . . don't have to close it all the way, right? Sometimes I kind of like . . . flying."

"Nah. There are other ways. And now that you know you're flying . . . maybe you'll be able to get better at it, too."

Nadia nodded, smiling. "I'd like that."

"I know you would, toots. I know."

When Nadia awoke back to her body, the sun had set, and the moon, just past the halfway point of waxing full, illuminated the clearing.

She was stiff and sore again, hungry and thirsty and very, very tired.

But it didn't matter. She slowly pushed herself to her feet, and something glinted, catching her eye.

It was a round stone, smoothed over by years of water flowing over, around, and through it. A river rock with a hole running through it, lopsided and off center. It was just smaller than her palm, maybe 2 1/2 inches in diameter, and only a quarter inch thick at its thickest point. It was a comforting weight in her hand and she tossed it into the air once, catching it with a solid "thwap" into her palm. After a moment's thought, she went to her pack at the edge of the cirlce and pulled out a small length of twine. She looped it around and through the hole in the rock. As she bent over, something fluttered from her hair.

A feather. Sleek, shining, damp, and black. A duck feather. She smiled, threading it into the knot as she tied the twine to the river rock. Then she slipped the twine through her belt loop so that the rock and feather hung just at the center of her left hip. She had enough necklaces, but she felt she should keep these things. It was her own little medicine bag.

She looked out over the water as the wind began to pick up, a soft smile on her face, then she bent over and put her boots back on, put her blankets away, and lifted her pack onto her shoulder.

She'd be getting back early. Wouldn't Walter be surprised.

[ooc: that Nadia is out on the preserve is fine for broadcast. Anything she sees or does here is NFB, since the vast majority of it isn't technically physically happening, anyway. Not for interaction, though OOC commentary is always welcome, if you can't make it past the tl;dr. Mucho thanks to