Part seven of the Twelve Stories series.
Hakon had kindled adequately.
Courtney stopped shivering.
Mesmerized by the flames, she couldn’t help but feel glad.
Hakon didn’t know where they were. His appearance, Courtney’s presence, all implied some continuity from the morning at the mediation retreat on the beach, trying to capture the glimmer of the sea behind his eyes.
But there seemed to be a gap in their memories. They were not underwater, but his memory leaps from sinking into the sea to adequately kindling a small fire in cave, or perhaps it was a tunnel.
“If this is a tunnel,” he thought, “which way did we come from? Did we come from the same direction?”
Courtney could see him knitting his brows. “So, what do we do?” she asks.
“I guess look for an exit. I don’t know which direction we came from.”
“I think you were here when I got here. But I don’t remember which direction I came from, either. How did you start the fire?”
“I have no idea.”
Silt covered the ground of the cave or tunnel. Like a lake or river bed.
“…What was your name, again?” she asks. “I want to say, ‘The Falconer,’ but that can’t be it.”
The quintessence of acquiescence, Hakon sat, green and garbled, consumed by confusion, no longer listening to Courtney.