SIGNY

water…I am paralyzed…” She started swimming skyward without thinking. Before she knew it, her head peeked above the waves. Her yellow eyes went blind as her feet hit the cold sand. The waves were crashing all around her and she found it hard to stand. She heard a different voice coming from the deep. It danced around the first, weaving in and out of resonance. “Underwater…I am paralyzed….” She felt a warm sensation in her chest and began walking toward the skeletal trees in the distance. Another girl called SIGNY was born on the savannah from the mouth of a lioness. For many years, she haunted the villagers with her lilting melodies. She brought them dreams of far away meadows full of flowers, and nightmares that reminded the men how they loved to maim and kill one another. Few saw her, but all who had would whisper to each other about her fiery hair, fierce, red gaze, and the gifts she had given them. They thought she was an apparition. One day, she caught her reflection as she knelt into a pool to take a drink of the clear water. But her face had changed somehow: her eyes were suns, and her hair had darkened. She became curious and bent closer to the surface of the pond. A dark, throbbing pulse pulled her headlong into the water. She barely realized she had been swimming until her feet hit the mossy bottom. It was too dark to see anything, but she felt the vibrations of the moon as it moved the current and her body in the pitch-black. All the sudden, a swirl of fast moving water je**ed her hard, and she lost consciousness. When she came to, she was sitting in a pile of soft dirt near the edge of land by a grove of skeletal trees growing up around abandoned concrete buildings. She heard a voice that was not hers: “If it’s all the same…if it’s all the same….” She looked up and saw it diving and pitching around another in the air. The full spectrum of light appeared around them. SIGNY of the OCEAN heard SIGNY of the SAVANNAH before she saw her. When SIGNY reached SIGNY, neither could speak. They grasped hands and pointed toward the sky. SIGNY of the SAVANNAH’s voice, trained like a falcon, returned to her immediately and she said: I think that’s your voice.” Suddenly, the other voice dived into SIGNY of the OCEAN and she turned pale and collapsed. She said: “I have been looking for you since dawn. I look familiar because our voices are one. What is your name?”

“SIGNY.”

“I am also SIGNY.”

The girls grasped hands again and looked out at the sea. Then they turned and looked back at the land.

“We are SIGNY,” they whispered and never let go.