Jessie Atkin
The sky is rarely ever blue. Avalon didn’t know blue was a rare color at the beginning, but they know now. At the beginning of every day, they wake up and it’s a miracle if they see blue. Black or red are the most common. When Avalon opens their eyes to see black or red there is hope. Perhaps this time they have returned. Perhaps this time they have woken up in the very same place they fell asleep the night before. But the hope only lasts a moment. The details are always too evident. They can feel the difference. In the heat, in the gravity, in the working of their optical faculties.
Life exists. Avalon knows this better than anyone. They know that not all life has developed the same, but it has developed none-the-less. Few species are bipedal, but even fewer lack ways to see. Despite ideas about telepathic communication and the often-unnecessary sense of taste, most beings have developed some form of visual awareness. It’s a shared attribute, no matter the universe, the general inclination to behold the world one inhabits.
And Avalon has seen more than most, more than anyone probably. Every day they rise to view a new universe. Every rotation of every new planet is a fresh and unique experience. What Avalon has seen, they know, are beyond anything a single human might have imagined in a lifetime. It is more than any single organism, for Avalon has inhabited them all, could possibly envision. The tales Avalon could tell, the wisdom they could impart, and the knowledge they could share is without compare in the history of time.
Sometimes they try to write something down, draw it, type it, project it, chisel it into stone, even with the knowledge it will never be understood. Avalon tries to leave an explanation, an insight, a feeling behind on the new worlds they inhabit even as they know their system of communication will never be understood by the world it is left upon. This expression in solitude is all Avalon has, and it is wholly and completely inadequate.
But while optical faculties change with the distance of a star, and propulsion, and weight, and the color of the sky, Avalon is still Avalon. Whatever accounts for a nervous system in every new form always winds itself into overdrive not merely because Avalon has awoken in a new universe, but because they are anxious, and shy, and reserved. They are the worst ambassador fate could have chosen to navigate all the realms of the living in the vastness of space. Because no one knows what they’ve done. No one, in any universe, has heard a whisper from the soul that has traversed so many.
Avalon is always reluctant, nervous. So, who could they tell? No one has ever asked them enough, been patient enough, been kind enough. The secrets and wonders they could tell if only, in every universe, they were not alone.
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Jessie Atkin writes fiction, essays, and plays. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Writers Resist, Daily Science Fiction, Space and Time Magazine, and elsewhere. She can be found online at jessieatkin.com, and on Twitter and Instagram as @JessieA_7.