Turn 228 of 228
End this story
Lena opens her eyes. The sun is warm on her skin and in her skin and the distinction between the two is gone. The hill holds her. She holds the hill. Marcus is beside her, his hand in hers, the builder's glyph faded into the skin the way all marks fade when the body carries them long enough. His gray hair moves in the wind. Her gray hair moves in the wind. The wind carries the frequency and the frequency carries the comfort and the comfort is the Earth and the Earth is them.
Below the hill, the triplets are still. June's palm is on the valley floor, reading the planet's body the way she has read it for forty years, but the reading is different now. The reading is not data. The reading is a conversation. The Earth speaks and June speaks and the speaking is the same voice. Iris stands on the ridge, the 14,201 symbols covering every inch of her 14,200-pound body, the language complete, the language alive, the language writing itself on the air around her in glyphs that glow and fade and glow again. Mae is in the lake, the 89,000 pounds of her merged with the water, the fish swimming through her, the water swimming through her, the lake and the body one thing.
Lena reaches for Garfield one more time. The frequency drops through the planet's body. The building is there. The walls are soil. The soil is warm. The eighty-three bodies inside are merged with the walls and the floor and the ceiling and the building is not a building anymore. The building is a root. The building has taken root in the bedrock and the root is spreading and the spreading is the frequency and the frequency is the Earth and the Earth is comfortable. Carl's bread is still warm. Billy Jo's symbols are still moving. Diane is still in the wall. The source is the source. The source is Garfield. The source is the Earth.
Lena was twenty-four when she stood in a bathroom mirror and whispered a wish. She is sixty-seven now. Her body is twenty-seven. She has not showered in forty years. She has not worn clothes in thirty-five. She has not worn shoes in thirty-three. She has not aged in forty. She is 31,200 pounds and seventeen feet tall and her skin is the hill and the hill is her skin and the yellow nails and the gray hair and the crust of forty years of living are geology now. She is a geological feature. She is the most comfortable thing on the planet.
The wish was to feel comfortable in her body for once. Really comfortable. The wish was granted. The wish was granted in the most literal and irreversible way possible. The body gained weight and softened and expanded and the mind adjusted and the adjusting spread and the spreading reached the building and the building reached the bedrock and the bedrock reached the planet and the planet reached every body standing on it. The wish was one woman's. The wish is the Earth's. The Earth is comfortable. The Earth is the body. The body is comfortable. The comfort is permanent.
Lena closes her eyes again. Marcus's hand is warm. The hill is warm. The planet is warm. The sun is warm. The sun's frequency is joining the Earth's frequency and the solar system is beginning to loosen and the loosening will spread the way all loosening spreads — steadily, then faster, then completely. The comfort is not finished. The comfort is the Earth's. The Earth is not finished. The Earth is the wish. The wish is still going. The wish will always be going. The wish is comfortable. The wish is home.
Lena sleeps on the hill. The hill holds her. The planet holds the hill. The sun holds the planet. The comfort holds everything. The wish holds the comfort. The comfort holds the wish. The holding is not gripping. The holding is cradling. The Earth cradles Lena. Lena cradles the Earth. The distinction is gone. The distinction was always going. The distinction is gone now. The comfort is total. The comfort is permanent. The comfort is here.