You Are One of Us

By Melissa Owens

Intercepted by an intergalactic traveler and shared with the author, Mahan Kirn, who translated it into English in 2020.

I don’t have a name, it hasn’t been necessary. I am One of Us. Mother says I’m more rambunctious than many young Ones, and noisier. That’s because I can’t tolerate separation. I’m overcome with aloneness when I am suddenly by myself. It’s too big. When Mother and the other Ones wander off and I don’t see them disappear into the woods, and I admit I’m distractable and often forget to pay attention, but when I look up to find her gone, I panic. All clarity of mind is lost, and I run frantically from bedding spot to bedding spot calling for her. 

Otherwise We are quiet Ones and my bleating is embarrassing to her. She rolls her eyes and sighs and if I get too close she lays her ears back and runs at me with her nose down, which is incredibly sad. I can almost not bear it.

Mother and I were walking today by the little stream in the valley, looking at this and that, lunching as We went, enjoying Our wiggly reflections in the pooled water, when We heard an upright creature coming down the hill. We didn’t look at it directly because Our eyes are powerful and We didn’t want to call attention to Ourselves, but We knew it had spotted Us, so We sidled quietly into the brush where the stream diverges into a grassy bog and We disappeared, leaving no footprints. 

The upright One came down the path as they tend to do. They stick to the tracks. They don’t fit under the bushes and between the trees. Their feet are too big for that and they don’t seem to like getting wet. 

They are indeed quite different than any of the other Ones. Upright with bizarrely large feet and all wrapped up in alien material, sometimes even their heads. And noisy! They are noisier even than the flocks of flying Ones. Some of the noise comes from their mouths but much of it comes from their feet and their alien wrappings. We can hear them coming from quite a distance but sometimes that doesn’t save Us from harm because these creatures have ways of doing harm from afar or at great speeds. In general, We avoid them. 

The strangest thing is that they somehow get around and busy themselves in the world despite being nearly unable to hear or see. They don’t have ears, just tiny holes sometimes visible on each side of their heads, and though they have small eyes, they don’t see with them, or if they see, their vision must be very poor. They are clumsy and pass through the forest without noting the many Ones who live there, so if We are still as they pass, We are invisible to them and they go by as if We did not exist. 

Even with these limitations, the upright Ones make astonishing changes to the land. They are way more industrious than the dam-building Ones and are similarly set upon shaping the land to their desires. One day there is forest and browse, and the next day there is noise and dust and the ground is laid bare except for great growling shells that move the dirt around. It keeps getting noisier until there are mountainous dwellings for the upright Ones to bed in. Then they make holes and put new trees and browse on the land, shrubs with luscious soft leaves and enormous flowers sweeter and more delicious than any that grow in the forest. The flowers are the best and We have learned to wait until they are wide open and colorful. They are always sweet and tender, but often the green browse has an odd bitterness. For the most part We eat the bright flowers and leave the bitter browse, but We appreciate that the upright Ones think to plant it.

Actually, We cannot really tell what they think because the mental emanations of the upright Ones are as forbiddingly tangled and dark as a vast blackberry bramble, impenetrable. This appears to Us as mysteriously troubling, like the taste on the browse they plant, like water in a muddy pond that many large mooing Ones have been drinking from, churned up and opaque, probably unhealthy. 

Hidden within the bushes today, We could hear the giant feet of the upright One crunching on the path. We could sense its tangled emanations, its interior blindness, impenetrable and opaque, unknowable.

Besides having tiny delicate feet, my beautiful Mother is knowable. Even at a distance, even when I’m not sure where she is and I go running from place to place to find her, even then I know her. We share a clear and transparent Song of the Heart, entirely authentic, unmuddied by contradictions and artifices, so I know what is on her mind. 

We also know the other Ones, the noisy flying Ones, who are remarkably talkative. The Ones who are messy eaters and leave shredded pinecones where they have dined. The Ones who are entirely silent and live under the leaves and among the roots. Even the Ones who would hunt Us and eat Us with their sharp teeth. All share the Song of the Heart so We can understand One another. We hear the green Ones too, and they hear Us, the trees and the small plants. We hear the wind and the moving earth. We listen and We know its intention.

What We hear, the Song of the Heart, is translated into vision within Us. It’s that way for all of Us. We see inside, which makes our eyes particularly vulnerable and very powerful. 

Sometimes I see Mother stop still with her ears forward and her calm eyes like bottomless pools. At first her ears are pressed forward as if she is listening for something, but then she relaxes into a trance, still and surrendered, receiving. She says she is listening to the Song that surrounds Us, that it is sweet and calls to her heart with a longing like the voice of some One she might have known long ago. It seems to come from far away, from somewhere deep within the stars, from some place that can only be seen by the heart, she says, in waves like the water when wind blows over it, waves of longing. I don’t know how to listen like that yet, but I want to learn.

But the upright Ones don’t seem to hear what Mother hears, and this One coming down the path had mental emanations that for the most part We could not understand, tangled and complicated, with flowerings of sparkling delusion and tender softness. So impenetrable that We could not see into it or hear if it was singing the Song of the Heart or not. 

I have heard legends of upright Ones, perhaps far away or long ago, who did know Us, but no One that I have met in my lifetime has ever met such a One, nor has any One that Mother can recall.

Mother and I were staying out of sight, still and hidden, and the upright One turned to crunch across the stream. I could feel that Mother wasn’t comfortable. I could see her discomfort in my mind as We do. It was getting too close! She was a bit ahead now, out of sight, but she wanted me to freeze because I had gotten distracted and I was lingering in an opening near the path by the sweet rosehips. 

I don’t like freezing because it is quite stressful, but it is necessary to glaze the eyes and still the body sometimes. We must learn to do it, all of us. We attend to Our breath, make it soft and shallow, and hold it out in exhalation until the air flows unobstructed into and out of Our bodies. But Our attention is not relaxed, and Our muscles are ready to spring into action. We can instantly run if We need to. Babies don’t know how to do this, so they are transparent and vulnerable. I don’t enjoy freezing, but it keeps Us safe, and I froze when she told me to.

I was just standing there frozen when the upright One crunched by. But then I heard it stop abruptly, and it stood still and some sounds came out. Its voice was pleasantly modulated, a bit like the voice of the big flying One who calls at night, “Who? Who? Who cooks for You? Who cooks for you?” 

It said, “Well aren’t YOU cute?” and the tone was so sweet and personal that I popped out of the freeze state without thinking and my eyes were there in all their luminous clarity, taking it in and letting it see into me. I didn’t feel afraid, in fact I wanted to laugh. And then it said, “With those fuzzy little horns!” and I could tell it was laughing though its little mouth was mostly closed. I couldn’t resist and I laughed too by tilting my head quizzically and waggling my ears erratically in big circles, perhaps longer than usual because I was so surprised. The upright One was as colorful as an enormous flower but elongated and not round like flowers tend to be, and it had long white fur on its head though its face was bare. Its little crinkly eyes were merry and We shared a moment of joy at the surprise of it all. Then We both knew it was time to part and the upright One resumed crunching down the path, not wanting to get its feet wet, and its mind resumed its blackberry bramble of emanations. 

I was so happy and excited I felt like bouncing, and I turned to follow Mother and tell her what had happened. I could tell she was up on the hillside still frozen, frozen for me really because she loves me and couldn’t bear for harm to come to me. I realized she would not be supportive of this interaction, and I would probably be scolded. But I was so happy it was worth it. I could still hear the crunching of the upright One’s huge feet on the gravel path, and then the crunching stopped, and I knew it had spotted Mother frozen in the brush on the hillside. And oddly I could see with the upright One’s eyes for a moment, in the way that I can see with other One’s eyes, and I knew that the upright One was saddened by Mother’s stressful fear, as I was saddened also. The freeze didn’t seem necessary.

Perhaps I am wiser than I was before I met the upright One, and perhaps We will meet it again, but certainly I still have much to learn, and I must be careful. For now, I will remember to do as Mother has taught me so I don’t end up roasted for an upright One’s dinner or squashed by an upright One in a fast-moving shell. 

I didn’t need to tell Mother what happened, she knew already, and she did lay her ears back on her neck and give me a scolding, and then we went up into the land of sharp corners and monstrous dwellings to browse on the orderly plantings. We like to get to them before the upright noisy Ones take the sweet new leaves off and sprinkle the ground with bitterness.

Melissa Owens is a writer and practicing psychotherapist living with her husband and a herd of wild deer on a hillside in southwest Washington overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.