What I know (So Far)

an orientation guide for myself…you?

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What I Know (So Far)

(in case I forget, or in case someone else finds these pages)

I don’t know where I am.
I don’t know what I am.
But here is what I’ve pieced together about this place that holds me:



Time
	•	The sun doesn’t keep regular hours.
Sometimes it lingers for days, sometimes it falls in minutes.
	•	Days stretch, collapse, repeat.
	•	My memories dissolve faster now.
	•	I can’t tell if I’ve been here weeks, months, or years.

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The River
	•	The river is called the Ram.  I named it like I have everything here.  
	•	It flows one way until it decides to flow the other.
	•	Once it rained upward out of the Ram — water leaping back into the sky, lightning clawing into clouds.
	•	Standing at its banks, I’ve heard my mother’s voice call me home for dinner. She’s been gone thirty years.

It is very wide and really deep - but the width seems to change each day.  Like it breathes in and out.  I can’t swim - so getting across is impossible.  

Once I followed the Ram until I found a rope that would allow me to cross. I tried - but the water rose up around me and almost carried me away so I had to go back.  

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The Cabin
	•	I woke up here. It was waiting.
	•	My food shows up daily: biscuits, tomato soup, cheese tacos, cookies,. I don’t feel hungry, but I still eat. I would miss eating too much.
	•	Once a week, new supplies appear — folded clothes, soap, cleaning rags.
	•	I never have to use the bathroom. I never have to shower. Somehow my body doesn’t ask for those things anymore.
	•	The pages of my journal vanish each morning, though the pressed impressions of my words remain. Like ghosts of what I wrote.

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The Night Scratching
	•	Some nights, something claws at my cabin door.
	•	It once called itself “Nameless.”
	•	It asked me for tea. It asked me to open my “bones.”
	•	I refused.
	•	The next morning, black motor-oil puddles shone on my steps.
	•	The silence afterward is worse than the scratching.

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The Hungry Ones
	•	I don’t know who they are.
	•	Only that they are watching.
	•	Paul ( I think it was him) left me a warning once: Be careful. The Hungry Ones are watching you.
	•	I feel them sometimes in the trees. In the shadows. Breathing. Waiting.

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Tom
	•	Tom is an oak tree older than I can imagine.
	•	He says this place is called The Betweening:
“between whatever was and whatever will be,
between breath and release,
between goodbye and the echo of someone saying it back.”
	•	He says I wasn’t filed correctly. 
	•	He snores like he has sleep apnea.
	•	I don’t think trees are supposed to lie, but sometimes I think Tom does.

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Paul
	•	Paul is a six-foot penguin with David Lee Roth hair.
	•	He lives across the Ram, and he waves at me.
	•	I think he is the one who leaves me food. 
Sometimes he disappears for days at a time.
	•	Once he came back missing a flipper. I don’t know how.
	•	I think he’s my best friend, even though we’ve never spoken.

Tom says he is a reckless adventurer ~ I think he seems sweet.  

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Ember
	•	Ember is the cat who moved into my cabin and refused to leave.
	•	I tried to push her out, but she always returned.
	•	Her fur is smoke. Her eyes change color: blue when calm, gold when content, green when curious, red when danger nears.
	•	When the scratching came, she stared the door down. The scratching stopped.
	•	She is the reason I don’t panic anymore.

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Adventures Beyond the Cabin
	•	I have only strayed a little. Twice.
	•	Both times ended with me relieved to return.
	•	Once I followed the river too far and was chased by shadows humming a dirge I half-remembered.
	•	Once I found the remains of a bridge, a cobwebbed lemonade stand, and a rope across the river I could not cross.
	•	I once found a small brown bird lying still on the ground. It had no wounds, no struggle in its feathers. It was simply dead.
	•	Death can happen here. Which confuses me more than anything else.

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The Sky
	•	Once I saw silhouettes drifting above me, like clouds carrying seeds.
	•	Behind them came a vast figure playing a violin.
	•	It whispered: “I’m the one who keeps the next age from happening. If you wake it too soon, everything will change before it’s ready.”

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Beth
	•	You are the only thing I am certain of.
	•	You exist — or you were supposed to.
	•	I was meant to meet you in the life I never lived.
	•	I write to you every day. The words vanish, but the pages remember their weight.
	•	I tell myself my letters are reaching you.

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That is what I know.
Which is to say: almost nothing.
But it’s enough to keep writing.
Enough to keep going.