s w a l l o w ❧ b r i d g eTHE DREAMING
" ...y....idge.....rth....wallo..."
The voice pulsed in her head. Her ear twitched. She could not make out the words before they sank back into the darkness. The foal too, sank back into the darkness of sleep.
" sky, bridge, earth, swallow "
It was clearer than before, but the words disjointed. They were simply nouns and she did not know what to make of it. Through the walls of the sac, she could smell earth. She could hear the fluttering of birds, and she fell into sleep again this time lulled by the song of cicadas.
This time, it was not a voice echoing in the darkness of her mind. This time, it was an image. She saw it. The earth, dry and barren. The forest, reduced to nothing but dried trunks. The riverbed murky. The water had all but receded from the land, nothing left but stagnant puddles and ponds of muddy water. The sky, blue and cloudless. She was suffering, suffering and feeling the pain of something, someone. It was an empty hollow pain and she felt it sharply in her chest. There was a lifelessness here, and the Mother Swamp hurt because her children hurt and because she could not do anything to fix the hurt. Mother Swamp could not reach and pull rain from the sky. Mother Swamp was helpless as she watched her children suffer. Mother Swamp was in pain. And she felt it just as surely as she felt the dry crackedness of the earth underneath her hooves.
And then, from nowhere, a swallow flew past. It flew straight and fast through the empty sky as if slicing it. And behind the swallow there came clouds. The clouds darkened, lightning danced between them like strings of light. Thunder resounded through the air. There was a pause. And then the rain came. At first it fell in just a few drops. The pitter-pattering of raindrops on the drought plagued swamp sounded, in her ears, much like the heart beat of Mother Swamp. It got heavier, changing into a curtain of water pouring onto the land. The pain in her chest slowly dimmed.
"Do you understand? The sky and the earth. The swallow that brings forth rain. The rain the connects the eternally separated earth and sky, even if only for a moment."
She understood. The rain was a bridge that crossed the gap between the earth and the sky. The swallow brought the rain behind it. And the rain brought back life to the swamp. She understood, yes.
The swamp was alive, everything was alive. And it was all connected.
She understood.
thirty-seven swallows dancing, five dragons wavering
arrive with the fall winds and depart with the spring rains
become the bridge between two worlds;
swiftly like swallows cutting through the sky
arrive with the fall winds and depart with the spring rains
become the bridge between two worlds;
swiftly like swallows cutting through the sky
