Aries 3 -- "Four Ways to Enter a World of Love"

From very early in the story's process, I knew this was a story about giving up control, and about sacrificing self-determination in order to confront some of the beauty and possibility that can be found in survival. I was so excited for this! However, despite my excitement for this concept, in practice, I ended up running head-first into my self-determined expectations of how I wanted the story to be. The more deeply I cared about its purpose, the more anxious I became about its presentation (polished vs. wild, controlled vs. organic). I also wanted it to be... easier to write? It was not! What a experience. Can you demand that Aries do and be what/who you want them to? You cannot!

I'm excited that things didn't go according to my plan. I feel gratefully galvanized by the lessons this Aries cycle taught me about: transformational change, radical adaptation, growing pains, and the exponential meanings of home.

This year, I am writing a short science-fiction/fantasy story for the Sun's journey through every 10 degrees of each tropical zodiac sign. Below is a story for Aries 3: the third decan of the cardinal fire sign. In the tradition that I practice, this decan corresponds with the planet Venus, and with the Four of Wands tarot card. If you'd like to know more about the heart of this project, you can read more here.

Thank you--so much--to the below writers for all of their influence.

Patrice Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community
Octavia E. Butler, Adulthood Rites
Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night
Pallas K. Augustine, The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home
Tade Thompson, Rosewater

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"Four Ways to Enter a World of Love"

by Lois Mei-en Kwa

    THAW

The ship thudded onto the beach like a swollen seed and lodged in the sand at the foot of the cliff. The shock of the landing induced the ship's dormitory to wake its inhabitants, and one by one, a thousand cryogenic preservation pods hissed in response to the sudden increase of warmth and popped open. Four days later, a thousand humans spilled out onto the hot, red sand.

They were children, prisoners, leaders, refugees, elders, and outcasts. At first, they wandered the beach, sliding wary glances in each other's direction. But as the light of their first sunset on this planet dimmed, they turned, as if moved by an unseen force, and stared, as if of one mind, in the direction of the cave.

The cave gaped in the side of the cliff like a mouth. It hummed without making a sound. It swallowed what was left of the light. Everybody stared, but no one could see beyond the entrance to what waited in the darkness. On the beach, a biting breeze swept through the crowd. The humans shuddered.

That first night, four hundred humans entered the cave. They walked, moved their hoverchairs, and carried each other into the darkness.

Those who stayed behind returned to the ship. Some spent the night watching the entrance to the cave, but no one emerged. 

The next morning, they unloaded their terraforming equipment from the ship and set up a base colony. Within a month, it became clear that most of the group was suffering an acute difficulty to adapting to a new life on this planet. The afflicted did not fall physically ill, but became host to an intense, growing sense of unease that could not be soothed. The only humans who remained unaffected were children who had not yet reached adolescence. 

There was no agreement on the cause of this suffering--it was something in the air, the water, the heat, the soil. So they packed up their camp, left the beach, climbed the cliff, traversed the lava fields, and cut a path through the forest. But no matter where the humans took their drills, concrete mixers, and factory printers, the feeling came with them. Progress on the colony's expansion slowed to a halt. 

When it became obvious that the humans had no chance of establishing a viable colony, somebody launched an emergency beacon. Soon, a rescue ship from their home planet arrived and took the colonists away.

    NEST

Four centuries after the colonists left this planet, the ship that bore them is nowhere to be seen--it was long ago tugged out by the tide, and now serves the needs of a majestic coral forest on the ocean floor. 

Today is a beautiful day for the Rite. Guests have been gathering for hours. They surround the cave from all directions. Those who traveled here from the arboreal canopies claim precarious seats on the sheerest stretch of the cliff face and peer down at the cave entrance. A group from the nearest ocean trench lounges on the beach where the incoming tide laps at the shore. The contingent from the lava fields watches from a distance, smoldering calmly from feet to fingertips. Soon, an elder with violet flowers cascading down her back chases a laughing, naked human child down the beach. The child dashes close to the cave entrance, then veers at the last moment and lets the elder scoop her up in her arms. Even small children know that the path to the cave must be kept clear for the family.

The cave hums without making a sound. It swallows what is left of the light.

The people who have gathered here turn to face the cave. They feel the pull, but do not draw near. They honor the young person inside by leaving them in the dark.

    GERM

Humid droplets cling to the furry gold moss that streaks the cave walls. Despite the heat, the child shivers, anxious and yearning in equal measure. She stands barefoot in the center of the antechamber, transfixed by the cave's call and her hesitancy to leave her old life behind.

The child's parents enter the antechamber. One folds four leather wings tight behind her shoulders to avoid brushing against the walls, and bends to kiss her child. One moves his hoverchair close and squeezes their child's hand. She squeezes back on the ridge of abalone shell that covers their knuckles. Her third parent says nothing, having emerged from his Rite without the vocal chords he had as a human child, but presses a pellet of fragrant red earth into the child's hand and rolls his thorax affectionately.

One by one, the parents draw near. They whisper to her a precious secret they learned from their own Rite. They speak her given name for the last time, and tell her that they love her.

When each parent has completed their portion of the Rite, a deep, stony sigh gusts through the antechamber. The cave has opened a seam in its back wall. The crack widens, and a very dark path appears, wide enough for a hoverchair to easily traverse, tall enough for a person with wings to pass through, and deep enough for a beloved child to choose to enter.

Her parents follow her into the crack, and together they move through a darkness that intensified with the silence they keep. The child slows once, anxious for her parents to soothe her by speaking her name again. But they do not, and she keeps moving forward. By leaving that name behind, she is moving closer to the name by which her family will greet her when they reunite. The thought of how much love she will return to after her Rite makes her feel braver. It takes a lot of love to help a child walk into a cave.

Suddenly, light seeps up from around the bend, and they turn a corner, arriving in the heart of the cave, a cavern so massive, deep, and soaring, it could hold two colony spaceships, like an ancient underground hangar. Vines as thick as human people descend from the ceiling, a pod swelling at the end of each vine where its tip reaches the floor. The child's heart races at the sight of the pods: hundreds of them, stretching through the cavern as far as she can see, each eight feet long and three feet wide, dark reddish-brown, dry as bark, and opaque as stone. They sing without making a sound. One, in particular, is calling her by her new name.

Her parents work to locate a crack in the side of her pod. It takes two of them to pull it open like a door. The child sees that the inside of the pod is lined with what looks like thick blankets of lush, sticky gold moss, and for a moment, the determination in her eyes is replace by wonder. 

Her parents help her climb inside. When she has made herself comfortable, they close the door and seal the pod shut, their faces full of love.

    BLOOM

Long after the child's parents have rejoined the gathering on the beach, the cave continues to sing. The pods' silent chorus has widened to make space for its newest initiate. The mossy filaments in her pod will bathe her in their spores, induce the deepest sleep she will ever know in her life, and begin the process of grafting into her body the biome that her ancestors welcomed into their lives when they arrived on this planet.

Forty nights after they landed, the ancestors emerged from the cave, some from the beach entrance, others from tunnels that led from the pods' cavern to rainforests, lava fields, and underwater ravines. The humans were forever changed. When the pods opened, they had released a new people: some with clawed feet, some with wings where they had once had arms, some with flowers budding where they had once had eyes. Those who had gills and aquatic tails emerged from the pods closest to a seawater exit and slipped powerfully into the waves.

They could breathe underwater--they could breathe the spore-filled air of the arboreal reaches--they could breathe the ashes that sloughed from the coalflowers--they could breathe the sulfuric gusts that heaved through the caves. They could no longer understand themselves as separate from the countless life-forms they soon encountered in the oceans, the canopies, the volcanoes, and the caves of the world they wished to call home. They could find joy in this world.

Tonight, almost all of the pods in the cave cradle the bodies of humans who have come of age. The children who entered the pods did so without knowing to which direction the cave will bind their future: to wind, waves, fire, or earth. Despite this, they entered, as if through an open door. Those who helped them come this far shut the door behind them and left them to move alone into the true mystery of their lives. The cave hums a song that can only be felt. The pods tremble, almost imperceptibly, with the many lives they hold. This is the way of the world.

THE END