Information
Parks
Legacy Name: Parks
The
Glade ClawsionOwner:
FauneAge: 4 years, 11 months, 4 weeks
Born: April 28th, 2019
Adopted: 4 years, 3 months, 1 week ago
Adopted: January 14th, 2020
Statistics
- Level: 10
- Strength: 26
- Defense: 27
- Speed: 26
- Health: 25
- HP: 25/25
- Intelligence: 0
- Books Read: 0
- Food Eaten: 0
- Job: Stock Worker
CREDITS
profile template (c)
helix (get it)
Poem by MeFaune
Background by Nika Benedictova on Unsplash
profile template (c)
helix (get it)Poem by Me
FauneBackground by Nika Benedictova on Unsplash
The voice faded into the fuzzy darkness as the young man rubbed his eyes, still half asleep in his childhood bedroom. His father's words had been playing in his mind almost every day since he had returned from college, a proud graduate with a well-earned degree facing, for the first time in his life, the experience of not having the "next thing" already lined up and planned. And if he was being honest, he had no idea what to do with that. He had his current job, and other prospects, and there was always graduate school if he wanted, but there was something else - a nagging sense of tugging inside him, like something was calling to him but he couldn't place what or where it was coming from.
He stared at the ceiling and willed himself to go back to sleep, but his mind had set down this path and would not allow him to hide from it in his slumbers. Groaning softly he flung his blankets from his bed and rolled feet first onto the cold floor.
"Look at the moon Alex, what do you see?"
He could not shake these well-worn words from his mind as he fumbled his groggy way into a sweater, shoved his phone into his pocket, and slipped out his window into the branches of the oak tree that stood proudly beside the silent suburban home. Not that he couldn't use the front door, or the back door, or the garage's side door. But there was something about the feeling of the rough bark under his hands, the way his stomach clenched momentarily as his weight shifted precariously twenty feet up. Those were the things that reminded him of the weightlessness of childhood and of his father's indominable spirit and good-humored sense of adventure. Muscle memory carried his feet across the backyard - grasses and weeds and untamed bushes - down the semi-obscured forest trail, and to the sloping river bank where he and his father used to sit on nights such as this.
"Look at the moon Alex, what do you see?"
his father would ask him with a glimmer of wonder in his eye.
Over the years the question had had many answers;
"Aliens!" he would shout as a small child, knowing his father would respond by scooping him up and swinging him around; "oh no the alien is abducting you!" he would yell as Alex laughed and laughed.
"That's Tycho! And Wargentin!" he gestured excitedly as a pre-teen, looking through the telescope his dad had bought him for his birthday in encouragement of his interest in astronomy.
"It's just the moon He had moaned more than once during his teen years as he moped about behind his dad, kicking smooth stones into the water with the toe of his sneakers in protest of being dragged out here before being able to go out with his friends.
But for the last few years - ever since the accident - his answer had been the same,
"you"
he would say softly as he stared up at the glowing moon with a painful longing.
It was only him and his memories on the riverbank tonight, absentmindedly plucking long blades of soft river grass and smashing them between his fingertips as we was known to do when frustrated or upset. No one else to think up and ask the tough questions, no one to guide him through to the answers he so deeply longed for. More than ever, and the rest of ever was still a lot, he wished his father was there with him to give him direction.
He thought back to one of the last conversations they had shared in this sacred spot before Alex had gone to college.
"There's more available to you, to us all. We just have to be intentionally aware of it, and then unafraid to reach for it."his father had said.
"Aware"
That word was like a mantra to his father, a vow. While Alex's father was never afraid to talk about the tough stuff with anyone who opened the door, he would rarely say he was of this group or that one, he didn't feel well-described by most labels and found them to be divisive versus constructive. What he would say though, was that he hoped to always remain as "fully aware" as possible; aware of things inside himself and outside his experiences and the perspective of the world that those experiences shaped, aware of things bigger than himself.
Aware, and unafraid.
He knew those were the words he had been called to the river to hear tonight. They felt heavy, like precious stones. As they moved around his mind, if he focused, it was like his father's voice ringed his own, like a soft echo traveled from his brain to his very soul.
The night was quiet, the soft lullaby of a gentle breeze on the grass and tree the only sound as the animals slept. There were no witnesses, save the glowing moon, who saw the young man leave so much lighter than he came. No one but his oldest friend to see him off on the journey of his lifetime.
- - - - - - - - - - -
"Look at the moon Alex. What do you see?"
It was an old friend now, the moon. It had sat with him each night in 100 different places.
He had stretched out under its cream glow during a warm summer night three years after that day and had been woken by a quiet shaking of his leg, his friend hastening him to grab a jacket and camera and get outside before Yellowstone's wild wolves disappeared from view.
He had caught glimpses of it between heavy dark clouds the night he shared a temperate coast with only one other, when he smeared chocolate from his smore on her nose and then kissed her until they had both forgotten their own names.
It had bore witness to him choking on a hotdog when the story a friend of a friend told over the campfire made him laugh so hard he couldn't breathe. The next day he watched that friend do their first attempt on El Cap, and it blew his mind what the human body could do.
He had seen it through the arches of Moab, above ancient and hearty Joshua trees, and through thick mangroves in Florida where he felt a little too aware of the practically prehistoric residents to sleep soundly.
It had illuminated petroglyphs on red walls in locations he would never speak of with too much detail, sat with him and his heavy thoughts after walking once bloody battlefields, and brought him to tears as he stood on mountainsides and looked out over the seemingly untamed and endless expanse of Denali.
- - - - - - - - - - -
"Look at the moon Sephy. What do you see?"
he asked the young girl - her braided hair somehow still wild, twigs snared in its grasp. Her face scrunched up slightly as she absentmindedly plucked blades of grass and smashed them between her small fingers.
"The moon and stars?"
her statement turned into a question at the very end the way they tend to when small children are learning that too many in the world ask questions they only want a specific answer to.
"There's no right or wrong answer baby girl" he laughed.
Relief and silliness gave her a crooked smile, and then she asked "what do you see Daddy?".
He grinned.
"I see someone who is always with us, even when we can't see them with our eyes. Someone who reflects our own light so we can see it, and shares that light with the world around them. And someone who is always a little mysterious and unafraid of changing.".
She looked back at the moon with a cocked head, trying to solve the riddle.
"Oh" he added with a mischevious grin, "and .. I ... see .... aliens! he yelled as he leapt up and made a silly face, hands curved into pretend claws and arms waving like tentacles. She laugh-screamed in delight and took off running up the yard towards the back porch, knowing he would give chase before catching her and swinging her round and round.
He paused for just a moment to give her a head start, and looked back over his shoulder with warmth in his eyes and a soft smile
"I see you Dad, always you."
Then he thundered across the dark yard with exaggerated steps, chasing the delighted and squealing child in the moonlight to her heart's content.