From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: Lungfish Life Old Shunt
Summary: heavy symbolism
Keywords: four words not 100
Reply-To: aaron@space.ualberta.ca
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 21:50:38 GMT

Lungfish Life Old Shunt

Lilias Highsmith sat on her porch and looked out at the cracked earth all
around her.  "We sure could use a spot of rain," she noted.

She half-expected her husband Allie to respond from inside the house.  He would
say, "Eh?"  His hearing wasn't that good.  But Allie was dead now.  Lilias was
alone.

She sat and stared into the hollow that marked the fishpond.  Or what was the
fishpond when there was any water.  Now it was just a hollow with a burrow at
the bottom of it.  That was where Allie's lungfish lived.

He'd brought the lungfish home last time he went diving.  In fact, it had been
his last time.  The doctor had told him that it wasn't safe.  His hearing had
already been ruined in that one accident.  But Allie had gone anyway.  Diving
was his life.  He knew that he had to go diving one last time.

So he had.  And he'd brought back a lungfish, Lord knows why.  "We're kindred
spirits," he said.  "When we can't be in the water, we just sit in our burrow
and dry up."

After that, he hadn't lasted much longer.  She'd come in from the porch one day
and found him dead.  Just like that.  Big smile on his face, too.  At least
he'd died happy, she thought.  That was only a month after his last dive.

She stared at the lungfish burrow.  She couldn't remember what it was that
happened to one of them when they went too long without water.  Or even how
long "too long" was.  She was just glad that Allie hadn't ended up like
that--all dried up from being too long away from the water.

She sat all day and watched clouds move in.  "It's gonna rain tonight," she
said.  Allie still didn't say anything.  Neither did the lungfish.

And rain it did.  The rain came down in torrents, soaking into the earth at
first, but collecting in the pool.  Lilias's eyes weren't as good as they used
to be, but she knew that the lungfish was out of his burrow now, back in the
water.  He no longer had to survive, holding on to life in an alien element.
Now he was where he'd always been meant to be.

She remembered what her grandma had told her when she was just young.  "Souls
aren't of this world," her grandma had said.  "They're only here for a little
while.  The most earthly of them are here the longest.  Some of the more
spiritual ones are only here for a little while.  But most of them don't come
down to Earth to be born at all.  They're the stars, in the heavens above.  You
see them fall from time to time.  Then they're coming down for a spell.  But
never for very long."  Her baby brother had just died, she recalled, and her
grandma's explanation made her feel better about it.

So what does that make me? she thought.  I been here longer than anyone I know.
Just sitting here and breathing.  And waiting.  All her life she felt like she
was waiting for something.

Suddenly her breathing became laboured.  She was just sitting, but she was
panting for breath.  The newly humid air was thick in her lungs, and it was a
positive effort to push it in and out.

And then a part of her that hadn't been used for a long time started to swell
up.  This is it, she thought.  This is what I had been waiting for.

Then she stopped breathing and her soul slid easily into the ocean of night.

--
---Alfvaen(a.k.a. Aaron V. Humphrey, Page of Newts)
Canadian Network For Space Research, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
"The bullroarer churns a Moebius strip of sound..."  Anna Amabiaca
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