To be Human: a story from the Watertime
short fiction from unpsychology voices
This is the fifth story from the Watertime taken from Unpsychology Magazine. It appeared in the second of two issue of Unpsychology in 2023— Imaginings 9.2 (both volumes are available free as PDFs from HERE and in print from: https://tinyurl.com/Unpsychologyprint)
The stories are set in a future — in a place a bit like the UK — beset by devastating seasonal floods. The Heat has ravaged the land; and the RageTime has left an uncertain, fearful society — a world in which outliers, artists and Lostlings creep around the edges of the present, and live with the legacies of a far distant past.
You can find the first four stories in previous editions of Unpsychology and at the links below:
Bobcat in the Watertime is at https://unpsychology.substack.com/p/bobcat-in-the-watertime
This Soaring is at https://unpsychology.substack.com/p/this-soaring
Habitants is at https://unpsychology.substack.com/p/habitants
Peregrinatio is at
https://unpsychology.substack.com/p/peregrinatio-a-story-from-the-watertime
IT HAS BEEN RAINING FOR WEEKS. Prolonged downpours are not unusual these days, but right now Bobcat imagines she is trapped in a vast dark building with a persistent hammering on the roof. She is deep in the forest – walking through streams and pools where paths once were. She hadn’t realised the forest stretched this far and the rhythm of her journey has induced a kind of trance. This in itself is familiar – trance is a state she is used to – but the depth of it surprises her. Everything seems magnified and endless.
It seems an eternity since she met Human travellers singing and camping in the forest clearing, and spoke with the women with her drum and rumbling wisdom. Since then, Bobcat has encountered no-one. Even the Habitants and ghosts, her usual companions, have become subdued and out of reach.
With her tracker’s sense she has been following the familiar signs of Habitants on the move – a rustle, a snap or a sudden burst of flight – but in recent days they haven’t come near, nor spoken with their familiar, reassuring, intuitive mind-chatter. And the ghosts are just not there at all – as if her ghost-sense has deserted her.
This feels very wrong. As a Lostling, she is used to being alone, but she has never been without the companionship of voices from the world around and beyond her. These are always present – reference points for her instincts and intuitions; senses swirling and settling; hidden things rising up, her body brimming with energy, crackling so the whole world feels encapsulated.
Feeling fear rising fast, she does her usual thing to calm herself with breath and presence. She sits at the base of a tree just above the waterline – and empties. This routine is well-practiced, learned through a chaotic, loss-filled childhood, perfected in a short adult life. In the emptiness, she trusts that something inquisitive will come to explore the space. Then others will follow and she will be filled with presence, life and perception again. Ready to move on.
So, she sits beneath this tree, with the imposing monotony of the forest canopy above, trusting her lifetime of practice. Waiting. Waiting.
Nothing comes. She probes with her ghost-sense. At the edge of her awareness, something flickers, then seems to withdraw. Nothing. She opens her perception to the surrounding forest.. She knows there are Habitants all around – she can even describe the unseen tableaux: a pair of jays squabbling high in the canopy; other birds circling, settling and calling; a fox hunting, as other more timid animals on the forest floor fan out before the predator, trying to be the one that escapes. Below all this, amongst soaked detritus and flooded channels on the forest floor, small things of myriad variety living in their own small worlds.
All this, she senses, but none of the Habitants have a voice. And the human part of her begins to ask, what happens when this part of ‘me’ is all that there is? She seldom uses this word – but what if there is no-one here but ‘me'?
She panics. Takes out her Pad. Thinks about calling someone – another human: brother Jake in the City; sister Flute at the Big House; even someone random back in Town. She has no Contact here however, so even this distraction is not available.
Something rises inside and she howls. A desolate baying cry that pours out from her body into the forest – though it is immediately muffled by the incessant rain. There is no reply or response. If anything, the forest quietens, thickens, as if the air and water around her was congealed by her cry. Everything closes in. She feels she is being forced underground into a burrow that is too small for her, and does the only thing her body can do – curling up tight – and whimpers to herself until eventually she sleeps.
She dreams. Wakes. Forgets the dream, retains its essence for only a moment. The grim chill of wandering somewhere desolate fades. She dozes, dreams, wakes; dozes, dreams, wakes. She senses dark figures looming over her near-to-waking self, as if they want to tell her something, but whatever they say is lost in waking.
Now, even the smooth transition between the waking and sleeping worlds is lost. She wakes the next time in rage and fear.
Everything that makes Bobcat Bobcat is fading into a singularity; a one-dimensional experience of her ‘self’ she has never felt before. Even when she lost Mamma and Gramma, even when Dadda left and Jake was taken, the voices, ghosts, dreams and connections she forged across time and space meant that she always knew she was part of something intricate and beautiful – the world as she imagines it really is.
Not a Human world of Teck, fear, big ideas and broken promises, but one filled with ordinary wonder, and taken-for granted magic, with no sleight of hand or trickery. Now, all gone, washed away in a deluge of weeks of rain in an endless, flooded forest.
She lies there. The landscape is monotonous and unchanging. Rain hammers, waters rise. She lies there, as saturated as everything else, eating nothing, drinking when she feels thirsty, holding out her hands to catch water that drips incessantly from the tree canopy. Once in a while she stirs, moves uphill a little to avoid the rising water. Mostly, she sleeps, dreams and wakes; sleeps, dreams and…
Waking, she senses something is different. It is quieter, brighter. The rain has stopped and shafts of sunlight are shining through the canopy. She is struck by their beauty. They remind her of the colours and shapes refracted through stained glass high in the tower of a Big House, illuminating the people below with glorious halos.
She remembers what she had decided to call this journey – her ‘peregrinatio’.
What was it that someone had written on the Pad Note?, “It’s walking for God, for fuck’s sake”. Maybe this is what she was walking for, this moment of glory? Maybe this is what the people in the long past meant by God?
Maybe… and her thoughts trail off into the ordinariness of this moment. The sun has come out. It does this every day somewhere, and now it’s here and the rain has stopped. The journey feels hopeless again..
She looks around. The forest begins to steam. The suffocating coagulation she felt before begins to dissipate, and Bobcat feels a lightening in her bones – even in the air itself. And now she feels hungry. So hungry. The awareness of this is so strong and sudden that she staggers. She she needs to eat, desperately!
Bobcat has been foraging since she was knee-high, and is soon in gathering mode. Many of the plants she would usually search for have been submerged by the water, but there are a few nuts and other fare scattered around. Not much, but enough to feed her as she wanders.
Walk on, she must. Something draws her and, though she still cannot sense the Habitant’s voices or the ghosts’ whispers, she trusts that something must be guiding her. This is how the world works. Yet, this is new territory for her and she is miles from familiar trails. She stops, realising that she is utterly lost, unsure of where she is and where she is going.
Breath. Presence. She turns to practice again. Look at where the stream is flowing, she tells herself. It is a directional signpost she is familiar with, and will lead somewhere other than this desolate, claustrophobic wood. The channels, however, are in full chaotic flow and it’s impossible to see the direction the original watercourse might be heading.
Breath. Presence.
Follow the higher ground, she thinks, and starts to climb a nearby hillock towards a small summit, on the other side of which is…more water.
Breath. Presence.
Let’s not get lost in panic, though everything else seems lost right now.
Breath. Presence.
Through the trees she sees a change in the tone of the light. It is not sunlight descending in shafts, more a spreading illumination. She scrambles towards it, which takes longer than it looks like it should, and emerges – scratched and newly saturated from several tumbles into streams and bushes on the way – into a clearing.
What opens up is utterly unexpected. Instead of endless trees and the rustling sounds and faint calls of Habitants, there is a hum of human activity and Lectrix. As her eyes become accustomed to the brightness, she sees a cluster of buildings – brick-built like those on the flooded estate back home. These, however, are not ruined, empty homes for restless ghosts, but buzzing with life. Human life.
Her instinct is to fall back into the familiar cover of the trees, but her human mind is thinking now and there seems little to be gained in returning to the forest. Cautiously, she approaches the nearest building. She can see there are people walking around the area. Most look purposeful, some are relaxed, chatting, enjoying the warmth of new sunshine. There are as many people here as she would usually see in the Town, on the few times she ventures in.
At first no-one notices her; then there are some curious glances – not unfriendly – but she must look very bedraggled and strange to these cleanly clothed humans. They are dressed a bit like the people she met in the wood – simple, easy garments in subdued colours, and certainly not Teck made.
Some look towards her as she stands stock still. Her habits of surviving in the world have deserted her. The Habitants are silent, the ghosts are gone. All that is left is a small, wet, ragged human in an unexpected and very human place.
“I feel strange” she thinks, “Me, me, me” - as if she is practicing saying the word.
Her body is calm. She is composed, silent and still, as one of the people approaches – concern on their face – and speaks to her. She cannot hear the words. Does not respond. Stares blankly. Allows herself to be led along a path, through a door and into one of the brick buildings. Follows down a lit corridor, to a room with a bed.
Bobcat sleeps…
When she wakes, and has been gently bathed, dressed and fed by quiet, kindly folk, she feels certain that she must no longer be a Lostling. Here, now, in this place, she can only be a Human. This thought surprises her, but it seems true. Everything she has known of her is gone, and what is left is a young, underfed, tatty-looking human animal. One that she sees in the mirror in this plain and comfortable room.
She begins to wander the corridors of these strange buildings – unhindered, and unchallenged. It occurs to her that there are connections in the world of which she has been entirely ignorant. If she had spent more time attending Homeschool, maybe she’d know a little more?
The thought tails off. Another one takes over.
Humans connect with each other. She remembers Mamma, Gramma and Dadda, with affection and feels their loss. She misses Jake and Flute, when she thinks of them (which isn’t often). Yet, she has never engaged with people like these, and has little in the way of conversation to offer. Fortunately, for the most part, they leave her alone, nodding a greeting or asking if she would like something.
The Habitant voices are silent and her ghost sense is gone. There is nothing but a swirl of questions turning around in her mind. She feels panic rising. Breath. Presence. She practices her shutdown, then picks up her Pad. – She has Contact in this Human place – and wonders whether to call Flute or Jake first to share the startling family news.
Each morning, as soon as she wakes, questions start whirling. The thoughts are like voices, but all of them her own. The ones she has known, and now craves, are silent – as if her mind has been hollowed out. She is left with being Human, like all these people walking about this strange place.
A human person, just like everyone else.