An excerpt from ‘Equilibrium’
Namjoon’s vision is blurry as he forces air back into his lungs. His panic is short-lived, peculiarly so for a child at the tender age of five. He stutters an inhale, chest expanding as he wills the fear away. On the fifth exhale, his eyes blink open; he’s back in the middle of the street amidst the crowds of people racing every which way. The buzzing of their voices dims as he tunes out the sounds around him. He aims his focus at the slabs beneath his feet, the stone cool and uneven under the leather draped around his feet.
Up until this point, Namjoon had believed the earth a constant. Grateful as he threaded over land, as his mother taught him, but the gentle mass that cradled life had never been in motion. Safe, stable, stationary. Until mere hours ago, when the ground had rattled and burst open, fissures rupturing the earth to swallow down entire buildings as the skies themselves had roared something petrifying.
His mother held him close, hand to his head as she had spoken words of calm despite the rhythmic surge behind her ribs right where Namjoon’s ear had been pressed. He wanted to believe her yet he knew her heart best – a melody ingrained in his very bones from way before he had been born.
So he takes another breath. Then another. And as his toes wiggle and trace the cracks and crevices of the patchy slab beneath him, he gathers all his courage, just like his mother had for his sake, and opens his eyes.
It takes him a few moments to process his surroundings, the loud voices, the thumping of feet over the road, the clinking of tools in the distance. He steels his heart, willing it to slow, to listen, and his eyes zero in on a building in the distance. One that stands tall and unscathed, mere steps away from an upturned fountain. A tower soars behind it, tilted, its roof ready to keel over. A tile slides off, then another follows.
Namjoon’s feet move. A safe place is what he had been taught to seek had he ever gotten lost.
He makes his way through the thongs of people swiftly. Rubble and debris stick to the bottom of his shoes.
A cart sits in the middle of the road, chock-full of stone wedges, tools, and leather fixings. He climbs on top of it, one foot after the other, eager not to lose sight of the building as he treads on.
With the general direction in mind, he jumps off the cart and makes his way over to the curved stone path to the right, ducking between a rushing adult’s legs one time too many.
Behind him, now, stretches the market street, where he’d lost the warmth of his mother’s hand all too suddenly.
The stairs at the end of the path are steep but it doesn’t deter him. He continues on valiantly, trusting that his mother will know where to look.
A tree cuts him in his tracks, the green giant lying horizontally across the path. Tears gather in Namjoon’s eyes, something as big is bound to be equally as old. His little hand runs over the bark, rugged and crumbling under his touch and with an apology on his lips, he forces his foot between the ridges of the bark and climbs over the fallen tree.
He swings one foot over the other side when the earth rumbles.
An eerie hush falls over the city.
He counts one, two–
A sickening crack echoes from his near vicinity and the very ground disappears before his eyes.
His hands scramble for purchase, fingers digging into the ancient bark.
Something moves.
Everything moves.
The earth roars as colossal chunks of it sink, their other halves lifting up towards the skies. Water splashes somewhere and the mere sound of it so petrifying as if a gargantuan mass has broken the surface. The wave of vibration it causes chills Namjoon to the bone.
He remains still way after the movements have ceased, eyes clenched shut and hands firm on the tree beneath him. Breathing in, then out.
Gradually, the sounds of the people come back to him and he chances opening a single eyelid.
His entire body breaks into a tremor when he notices the ground below him. The path he had stood on not ten minutes ago now sits meters below the tree and panic is ready to rush right back in as Namjoon shakily looks to the other side and sees the tree suspended by its crown on a chunk of crumbling land where the rest of the path continues.
His heart trembles. It shakes and convulses and it hurts. Tears roll down his cheeks, unbidden. Something squeezes at his chest and all he wants is to feel the warmth of his mother’s hands around him.
He’s petrified. Not a single muscle in his body wants to move. The tree hangs, its uprooted end barely touching the lowered part of the land.
He sobs and wails, tries to will it all away. But the bark under his fingertips persists, it doesn’t turn into the cotton of his sheets, the silk of his mother’s dresses when he lies on her lap in the afternoons. It’s hard and it digs into his soft skin, unlike the delicate fabrics that his mother blankets him in.
His sobs turn into gasps, his entire body pulsing in turn. The skin of his temple hurts with how hard he’s pressing into the tree, but he vaguely acknowledges it.
His vision swims, the forest across his line of sight mixes into greens and grays.
Something blinks. A yellowish dot blends somewhere into the colors and Namjoon sucks a breath in and squeezes his eyes shut. He pushes his forehead against the bark and hopes it all goes away.
The life gets startled out of him when something pokes his shoulder. He lifts his head and finds nothing there. Tremors continue to shake his small frame and he almost falls when he sees something dart closer within his peripherals.
A gust of wind and a flash of yellow and red twirl around him, disorienting him altogether, just as a shape forms before his very eyes.
It’s stubby, a blend of reds and browns and grays, a hint of ivory peeking behind its trunk. The texture of its skin is similar to the one digging into Namjoon’s fingertips. Big, dark eyes peer back at him, globes of obsidian as deep as the fissure below the tree seems. It smells of foliage, the forest during fall. Its stubby body hangs in the air, held up by the two massive ears made out of what have to be numerous tree leaves intricately weaved together. It flaps them, up and down, up and down. An eleafant.
It stretches no bigger than the size of Namjoon’s fists put together.
The eleafant inhales and as its trunk stretches, a chirping sound chimes out of its tiny body.
It cocks its head as the sounds dies down, eyes curiously trained on Namjoon.
It, then, inhales again, its entire body straining with how much air it forces in and this time the sound is that of a cherry-green lemur.
Namjoon exhales shakily and the eleafant beams, back flipping in the air.
Its trunk reaches towards its ears and it squeezes its eyes shut before it pulls and plucks out a leaf out of its ear. A tear rolls down its face and it uses the leaf to wipe it away before it offers it to Namjoon, hoping that he does the same.
He remains unmoving, eyes fixed on the leaf the creature holds with its trunk.
Moments pass before his muscles budge and ever so slowly, he reaches out and grabs it tenderly, albeit shaking, and whispers out a ‘thank you’.
The eleafant watches happily as Namjoon mimics the action, pressing the leaf against the skin of his cheek.
Its eyes shift, however, and what Namjoon will soon realize is a sign of alarm washes over the little creature. It begins moving frantically before Namjoon’s face, trunk pointing behind Namjoon as it fidgets around.
He slowly turns around in time to see the stone plates that keep the tree suspended are beginning to crumble and crack. His heart speeds up but before he panics he feels a weight against his cheek, and a warm little mass signaling for his attention.
He watches as the tiny creature rolls in the air before it shoots up the body of the tree and begins jerking this and that way at the base of the crown.
Almost like... It’s urging him.
His instincts are split between latching onto the bark and never moving again and climbing up and getting back onto solid ground instead.
The eleafant squiggles from its spot before it shoots back down and wraps its trunk around one of Namjoon’s fingers, pulling it up towards the crown of the tree. He shakes his head from side to side, fear locking him up at the mere thought of moving. Yet, as the wind picks up, the little creature becomes more and more insistent, the urgency now clear in its dark eyes.
Stone grinds on stone and the telltale crack of wood splitting reaches Namjoon’s ears. He twists around once more and to his utter horror, the plate that holds the tree in the air is now threatening to slide off the lifted cliff and slam the entire tree down with it.
[...]
(An excerpt from a story that I probably will never finish.)
— dated December 28, 2021, dormant in my google drive