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He listens, is politely attentive, but none of this matters. Not really. She’s telling him stories about a world that doesn’t know it’s ending.
The only thing surprising about any of this is that he’s alive to see it. That’s the real bet they all made, isn’t it? It will come. But not until we’re gone.
In the matter of Wanda and the local water bodies, she continued to collect data but acclimated to the idea that there were many, many more questions than answers. In this matter, and in every other. When she had been young, this truth had unsettled her. The older she got, the more she allowed it to soothe her.
The clock of her lifetime is round and bright. There is so much they want her to know, more than she can possibly understand. There are eons to share, in both directions—past and future make no difference to them; both matter, both are needed. But now is always the center.
The Edge used to be a physical place, a line between the ocean and dry land, approximately nine feet below the hull of her canoe where she floats at this very moment. Now it is a state of mind, an undertow that tickles her feet no matter where she goes. She’s felt it since she was a girl, and she feels it now.
The blue house was a relic, as all the houses in Rudder were. Structures that belonged to an old paradigm. A series of rooms built upon a series of ideas, none of which had withstood the test of time: the idea that what was here would always be here; the idea that the limestone beneath their feet would go on holding them forever; the idea that the coast was a faithful, unmoving line in the sand. None of this was true anymore. The thing was, it never had been.
There would be no walls and there would be no windows. They would endure the elements as the very first people had, with respect and curiosity and the interdependence Wanda was born into. This would be how Phyllis spent her remaining time on this earth. Hadn’t humans lived this way for thousands of years? They must learn to live this way once more—she was certain of it. The structures they built would bend and break, and they would make new ones. There would be nothing so precious that they couldn’t begin again. And again.
