The path.

     Falling.  She was always falling.  And landing. And moving forward.  Life. Fragile. Beautiful. Rhythmic.  Harsh. Unpredictable chaos wrapped in the predictable cycles of reproduction, birth, and death.  Always moving forward. And always traversing the same path. 

     The woman sighed heavily as she locked her workstation at the end of the day, ever mindful of the fact that regulations meant she could be in some serious doo doo if someone caught her computer unlocked.  Data privacy and all that. A very First World and Technology Age problem. She’d forgotten to lock the computer down a few weeks ago, and one of her more smart-assed coworkers changed her desktop background to a slightly NSFW scene that made the woman turn red with rather alarming speed.  Never again.  

     Shoving against the edge of the desk, the woman rolled backwards on an office chair that never did fit quite right...especially now with her constantly aching back.  She would ask for a new chair, but that would require paperwork. Heaven knew she had enough to do already.  

     A well-practiced kick and twist meant that when the chair stopped its motion, the woman was facing her work bag.  She gathered her belongings, bid her coworkers farewell, and got up to go home. She rather enjoyed the click-clack of her favorite high heels as she strode to the door.  Of course it was the one farthest away from her car. Gotta get those steps in, after all. A few extra here wouldn’t hurt anything. 

     Her car started without a problem.  The darn thing should - it was only a year old.  She considered mentally running through the next day’s tasks at her little office job, but that was too much mental effort.  After all, she wasn’t on the clock right now and it had felt like a freakishly long day. But then again, every day felt freakishly long right now.  Shaking her head, she cleared her mind of anything related to work - she could plan out the day in 15 hours when the clock started ticking again and she was sipping her morning coffee.  For now, she tuned her music streaming app to the most interesting playlist she found recently and lost herself in tribal electronica beats as she began the journey home.  

     The woman had always enjoyed her drive home.  Having worked at this job for a little over a year, she’d made this particular trip, what….at least 600 times?  Every time she reached her favorite little twisty part, she imagined what it must have looked like through the millenia.  Today was no different. This was part of her ordinary, every day routine. And yet today would be anything but ordinary.

     Sludge.  Mist. Dark.  Cold. Wind. Deafening noise…but what could tell without eardrums?  The sludge oozed. Infinitesimally slowly, but it shifted all the same.  Life stirred within, the miniscule rumblings of one-celled microbes that would evolve and change and adapt into something that had many cells and undefined potential.  A shadow crossed the land. Suddenly, the arid swirls of gases churning above the sludge changed. The future site of a certain winding road became too hot and the cells died.  Hundreds of years passed. More sludge moved. More cells evolved – hardier cells. The climate changed again…and this more resilient life continued living.  

         A red light interrupted the woman’s thoughts.  Primordial sludge was great and all that, but slamming into the car in front of her wasn’t exactly on her agenda for the evening.  Glancing to her left, she saw familiar tall trees obscuring her view of oncoming traffic. A peek to the right showed more trees...and a deer.  

     She froze.  The woman, that is.  Not the deer. Fear had already paralyzed it’s limbs.  The poor young buck had not meant to wander so close to the solid river-looking thing.  After all, the things that scurried across it had breath that burned his tender little nose...and they were loud, so very loud.  He was in his first few weeks away from his momma. Not quite yet having mastered the art of being completely aware of his surroundings while eating, he had been entirely engrossed in consuming his way forwards on a line of especially tasty tender young shoots.  Awareness had rushed in on him all at once and he looked up as the noise and the smell and the busy flooded his senses...then locked eyes with something sitting inside a blue smelly thing.

     The ever-present “they” say animals know your true intent towards them the instant they make eye contact, eyes being windows to the soul and all that.  The woman didn’t know if that was true, but she could easily see this little deer was terrified. With every small shred of belief in cosmic energy she held, and a little prayer to boot (couldn’t hurt, right?), she willed the deer to calm itself and melt into the shadows, to become once again an unseen heartbeat within the underbrush.  Maintaining eye contact, the deer relaxed a tiny bit - the woman was sure of it - but that only lasted a fraction of a second. Both woman and deer jumped when a frustrated driver in the smelly thing behind the woman laid on his horn. Looking up, the woman saw the light was now green and she’d held up traffic. The deer bounded swiftly away as she began her journey home yet again, adrenaline flowing through both their veins.

     Fight or flee.  Bite or run. Eat….or be eaten.  Cells had continued to evolve, arranging and rearranging into huge multi-celled organisms which roared, ran, ate, and fucked more of themselves into being.  Great big versions of life with razor-sharp teeth became the stuff of movies and dreams millions of years later, but for now they just needed to eat. Following a windy path through the forest on the trails of an edible herbivore, the massive carnivorous dinosaur didn’t know of when the very planet proved herself full of life and forced tectonic plates to evolve the surface on which he now stalked.  The creature only knew that before him was a trail, and on that trail was dinner. Dinner he needed so his life could go on. So on he continued, blinking briefly as a great black bird flew above him across the path.

     Part of the reason the woman liked this windy road so much was that it just looped about like a lazy fly on a warm Sunday afternoon.  Back and forth and back and forth...it snaked through the trees in a way that forced drivers to slow down a bit and take life a bit more calmly.  After all, one couldn’t see very far in front of them - too many trees, too many loops.  

     The woman tried to pinpoint exactly why she enjoyed this particular drive so much.  In the back of her mind, she knew it had to do with some primal knowledge that this path was an ancient animal highway.  Then it carried later forms of life that hunted those using the path. Then people came about and the path’s usage evolved still further.  She felt connected to all that Life that came before - the creatures, the humans, the weather and seasons and yellow leaves...    

      A crow flew across her route to land on a tree some two hundred yards ahead.  As she approached, the woman thought briefly about some silly superstition her aunt had told her about black cats…but what about black birds?  

     Crouch.  Hide. Focus.  Breath. Wait. Remember a childhood lesson about patience.  Breath. Stay silent. Life would come. It always did. Neena’ak waited.  Dinner would arrive, yet another form of life to feed and further his own form and kind.  Only his eyes moved as he tracked the progress of a black crow that flew across the path. A chill flashed up his spine as his eyes widened.  Crows were the wise ones, the sacred bird. This particular one landed…and then looked directly at the man. It’s gaze flitted behind him and a branch snapped.  The man froze, then spun around to find the hunter was truly the hunted. An enormous black bear stood up before him. Life had to go on…which meant one creature ate and the other died.  And the crow watched. 

     A sudden chill sent a shudder through the woman’s small frame.   That crow had looked suspiciously like it was looking at her. No, through her, through the story that had brought her to that moment, through her very history to every genetic ancestor who had crossed this winding stretch of existence.  The bird’s eyes carried a wisdom she rarely saw in people, much less animals. Something about it’s gaze was sad, wizened, impossibly old…and expectant. It had looked at her as though appraising her, as though it owned this stretch of road, this ancient hunting ground, this well-worn animal path, this smudge in the primordial ooze.  

     As she drove past, the crow’s gaze flicked downward briefly.  It was just a flit, but the woman saw it. She was supposed to.  Her hand traveled unconsciously to her belly and felt the flutter of a small foot that had recently been jammed under her ribs.  Life continued as it always had and always would. Fragile. Beautiful. Rhythmic. Predictable swirls of predictable reproduction, birth and death as all Life’s creatures bit, fought, ate, and fucked their way into more versions of themselves that kept evolving.  Ordinary life continuing to flow across the path of Time.

     The crow knew someone going the opposite direction was going to lose control of their vehicle, knew what was going to happen.  It did not interfere. It could not. It can only watch as life continues along the path of most persistence.  

     At least they were able to save the baby.