Chilling by the pond.

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August 2015

After my first couple of visits to this place I went out and bought this little notebook. It somehow makes it more…tangible to me if I write down my experiences, more believable if I can return to it time and time again and relive the words I scribble down on the page. I can’t write as often as I’d like. I feel as if I have to hide it from my daughter- the fact that I never once in all of her sixteen years mentioned a desire to write might tip her off to something being up. Which means I can only write in the late evenings or early mornings if I want the comfort of home. Otherwise I take the journal and go across the bridge to write in the solitude of one of the forts or on empty stretches of beach. There’s something comforting about writing in the forts…I feel as if I’m being consoled by the gentle spirits that roam the barracks.

When my discovery was still fresh, I visited the place daily. Once even twice a day. I saw the sea in nearly all her moods. More than once she was a gentle, sleeping gray dove, a round puffy mess of feathers with her little head tucked against her chest. Sometimes she was wild and frisky, a mustang mare galloping across an endless rolling plain. Even once she was an Aztec warrior, bathing in the dripping blood of a dying sun.

While she changed, the place I visited didn’t. Unless it changes during my points of absence, that is. I can’t just skirt my responsibilities to spend all my time in this place, though I’d very much like to. It’s always sunny in this place, sunny and gentle. There’s flowers and poppies, a waterfall that feeds a stream and pond with her tears- a fantastical version of the forests a child thinks of. There’s a depression in the earth ringed with birch trees and filled with wild blueberries. There’s sunning rocks and a dilapidated church like structure. I spend most of my time there pondering over whom or what created it. The creatures are all different from each other; I’ve only seen one or two that are similar to me. Yet there are some that I feel could create something like the church if hard pressed to. There are a lot of predators, I’ve noticed, or predator mixes. I find myself being afraid of them at first, naturally, but none of them have made a move to eat me yet. I haven’t tried to talk to any of them; I don’t know if I can. So far I’ve figured out how to bow and nod at them- bowing I take it is the universal version of hello. I don’t feel like I’m one of them, I feel like I’m lying to them by returning home every day, for masquerading around as one of them, only to go back to my human life whenever I wish of it. Suppose others do this too? Could that happen? It’d make sense, I guess. If I can stumble across a whole other world, and I’m not all that special, then I guess someone else could too. I took weeks off, just to see if the door will still be there when my life took a break. It was. Taking a quick peek inside, I found everything as it was. Sunny, strange creatures and all as it were.

That last visit I took a few days ago solidified the prospect that I really, truly could come and go as I pleased. If I can make some sort of second life in this forest, then I needed a name. The creatures here talked to each other somehow, possibly verbally, I’ve yet to find myself in especially talkative company. If they did, I needed a name. I wanted to act like I belonged here, like nothing surprised me. I hope it’s safe to assume these creatures had names….perhaps I’ll go with Nautilus, in honor of the shell necklace my daughter and wife picked out for me when my little girl was nothing more than five. She had picked it out for my gift, and eleven years later I’ve yet to take it off…
Yes. Nautilus. It has a nice ring to it.


July 2015
When I was young, when the world was still full of gallant knights battling dragons for their hordes of riches, or pirates still lingered on the sea with their creaking wooden ships and snapping black sails, I used to pretend that the scalloped clouds overhead were the scales of some great serpent. What was I, to that great serpent? Nothing more than a speck, something so tiny and insignificant, like the plankton drifting on the currents of the sea, that the great beast would not so much as notice me as it drifted by.

The years twisted these ideas, forming them again and again as I aged, but the base emotions still linger. I am nothing to the sky. Just as the ships are nothing to the sea and to the right dragon, a knight is nothing more than an annoying, bad tempered shiny horse fly that needs to be squashed. The world reminds you that you are nothing, that there is always something grander and far more powerful waiting just out of reach.

The sea reminds me of those moments in my youth- where I was awestruck by the simple beauty of the world around me. It’s probably why I never left. There’s something magical in the way the sun turns the waves emerald on clear days and calming in the sound of the breakers rolling to shore. Deep down in my heart I see her as a comfort, a friend. A fact I will probably never admit to anyone.

The sea enveloped me in her comfort when Claudia died, and now again I turn to her when the future becomes more obscure. Dakota will be heading off to college in a few years, and I feel like a failure in being unable to help for less than half. If that. I work myself into the ground, and still try to maintain my nautical shop on the side, and all I can do is barely keep our heads above water. It’s not like she’s not working…I just fear it will not be enough.

It’s why I went to the sea today. I took time out of my morning to go to the state park just across the river. The rest…it’s too bizarre to try to think logically about. One minute I was walking along the rocky shore of an inlet, the next I was rounding a corner and found myself in some entirely different place. The sea and shore became an expanse of trees. I became something different too, some sort of hoofed creature…a deer? With a human like face? What? The only thing that was still…me…was the silver nautilus half shell necklace inlaid in gold about my neck.

After uttering a high pitched whine and staring around in shock, I eventually made myself explore. The creatures of this place are a strange lot, but considering what I looked like…I figured it came with the territory. I met a fawn like me, kind of… and a strange creature that reminds me strongly of a jellyfish. Maybe this is an alternate world where all the things by and in the sea took on different forms…or maybe the vitamins I take in the morning are really laced with something.

I made myself learn their mannerisms, doing my damnedest to make it seem like I fit in-like I belong among them. Part of me is terrified of what they’d do if they realized I was intruding on their world. The other part of me refuses to think of it. At the end, I snuck my way home. I’m not sure if I can return…or if this is just some random one time thing.

Naut;Naut-Naut; Nauty.: Male .: Mature adult .: TEF deer.: #2.: Lives in modern day Astoria, Oregon.: Mid thirties.: Go with the flow personality.: Polite, but guarded.: Antelope pelt | Fan antlers | Noh mask

Sketch Ref

Character is really developed, I'm just trying to figure out how I want to put it all together.
Faces met: Doves; Jelly guy; Yasen(?); Wisteria; dark uni fawn; Canary; Torien; Eloa;
Background from here and all credit goes to its owner. Naut is a character and is 100% IC; Character to his fullest extent is © Waning-Sun(Kiwara).