There was a thing when one is taken by tragedy. One reinvents their self in order to find a way to move forward. Sometimes it is a bad relationship, sometimes a durance, or kicking addiction. Sometimes the matrix doesn't work because the matrix itself is what needs help in how one thinks or feels. That change is what allows one to move forward again.
For others, like Gisa, the road is long and full of curves but never truly stops. There is a journey that will propel one forward that brings us all to a moment to make us question the direction of our path or the way we walk it. The hedge was full of these moments; beautiful and tragic, curious, and terrible. Today was no exception.
Reinvention, as Alonso says, is very very boring if you only do it once. Once upon a time, Gisa sold the last memories of her mortal father and mother, of the kibbutz where she was born, in order to place a shin on her forehead. She went from being a clay woman torn apart, her eyes pulled out, by The Desert, to a golem.
And over the decades, she has gone back to British Palestine, to the partitioned territories, and finally to Israel, time and time again, to help those torn apart by The Desert. After Yom Kippur, she even helped another clay person make themselves a golem.
She meets messengers every so often in the Hedge, often but not always Sacred Couriers, to get updates from Old City -- only people in a city like Jerusalem name a freehold something like 'Old City' and assume that everyone knows where and what Old City is. And today? Today is a scheduled update day. The first Sunday of the month. She pulls her coat around herself and moves through the Hedge; her feet in her Hedgespun shoes touch the earth. She's swifter than usual -- she doesn't let people see how fast she can actually move, usually, and today? Today the ground falls away under her feet, her strides no less purposeful for all their speed. And she is quick, on her way to the meeting spot in the Western Hedge, near the Freehold. Quick like fire through dry grass.
The hedge fell away in steps, the trod changing subtly in mood as she went. Most was wildernedd, though there were echoes of walls of stone reclaimed by nature and overgrown. Anyone thinking the Hedge lacked sentience or a will didn't spend enough time with it. Or perhaps too much.
Small things cleared way for a golem on the move except one. Maybe they were there to obstruct the path. Maybe it was portent or obstinate, but there was a small creature sitting on a stump that was prominent and unmoving in the path of the trod before it forked off in three directions.
One path seemed to lead up into a hilly area that seemed more rocky. The one forward seemed to fold rolling hills into a forested and shadowed area. Shady, not unwelcoming. The last seemed to stretch down where the trees fell off into a rocky outcropping and the wind promised the smell and tang of water and salt with it.
The figure though was perhaps four and a half feet tall, and while moderately dressed for the weather. with long hairs that seemed to fall back from shortened, plump arms, and a fretful face, full and pleasant. They seemed to be looking at the paths before looking up to see someone approaching. Knitting needles were lowered and all three fingers wiggled in tentative greeting.
The grass bends out of her way so her feet land surely on solid ground, the branches provide her shade and stretch out of her way, the thorns lean a little this way and that. But this one object -- this one creature -- out of all the Hedge, today, doesn't help Gisa. It's an anchor in the midst of a rocking ocean, a fixed rock in the center of a sandstorm, and Gisa stops, her quick progress arrested by the presence of this -- rather odd looking creature. "... shalom," she offers, carefully enough. One never knows what is wanted by those in the Hedge, near or far.
The Hob was looking at Gisa curiously, maybe cautious or afraid, but perhaps not of Gisa. The hand took up needle again that looked like it was made of long porcupine quill and it spoke, quite distinctly, "Um Hullo? Shalom?" It didn't know what Shalom was but it seemed to be accepted as greeting. Strangely enough the distraught creature asked, "Did you need help? I usually don't see many things not trying to eat me around here." The thought caught u to them and asked rather animated, "Wait you aren't here to eat me are you?"
"Shalom means to make whole. But we say 'peace,' and it is a greeting." Gisa raises her shoulders and drops them, fluid and graceful; she's forgotten, for the moment, that she has to act like the slow, single-minded creature that she usually presents to others. "Hello. And no. You are not kosher. I would not eat you. Nor do I eat anything that answers me back when I say hello." No one teach her Fang and Talon, or she will quickly become vegan. "I am meeting a messenger here. From Israel. Well -- a bit that way." One hand rises and gestures up the path. "What are you knitting?" Pause. "Have you seen anyone but me recently?"
The small being lit up an earnest smile and waves a hand bashfully, "Nooo I'm not Kosher. I an Nu'na. I have not seen anyone right now but you. Sometimes many pass, sometimes not." How long has Nu'na been sitting there exactly. Looking down they answered "I am knitting... myself I think? But not yet. Many decisions before I consider the pattern." Some form of Caterpillar hob apparently. They turned their head and looked around perhaps sad at having nowhere to offer to rest as the stump was occupied. "It sounds a lovely place. Why are you going?"
Laughter, then, a low sound like rocks rolling down a hill. "Kosher is not -- " and then Gisa waves a hand absently, dismissing it. "Nu'na. Is it a name, or a type, or both?" Gisa keeps checking up the Hedge path and back, in case the messenger is on their way, but at the same time, she's kind of enchanted by this small, nervous creature. "You are making yourself?" The flames which are her eyes glitter and sparkle at that. "I think that everyone does, sooner or later." Her shoulders flow up and down again, easily. "To meet a messenger. To learn if I am needed to help, and to get news from Old Town."
The creature looked at the knitting quills and back up to Gisa, "Nu-na is... Nu'na I think. I don't know I can say I am a type. We are all our own type. Well, except Fetches I think. They become someone else. That is type. but who else can be us but us? Maybe similar to me, but they make themselves into... more them. I'm supposed to be making myself next. I was larvae. Then not. Then me. Next... I do not know." The knitting seemed to be of the long hairs from the caterpillar body in a circle becoming a slow cocoon. It was paused though. Nu'na looked up, "Only I can be me. Only you can be you but I cannot decide.. what I need to be. What if I choose wrong? So Nu'na stops. It's... been a while. I did not see a messenger though. If they need help what will you do?"
The golem listens to the long little monologue that the Nu'na goes on, slowly nodding here and there. "Change brings hope. If things are the same, there is nothing to ever hope for. Maybe you don't get to know for sure. You just have to hope that the change that comes is something you can love." She raises her shoulders and drops them again -- it's a familiar gesture for a creature that has a limited range of emotional expression. "Yes. Only I can be me. Only you can be you. So there's no blueprint. Maybe you just have to be a little hopeful and see what happens on the other side of your cocoon." She sniffs slightly. "I will possibly go to Israel, to help. Maybe just give a message. Maybe -- maybe ask someone to go with me, depending on the help they need." Gisa clears her throat.
Nu'na looked to Gisa and tilted their head curiously, "Will you let the trip change you or will you change for the trip?" Change for caterpillars was natural but also a bit of a big deal. Nu'na pointed, "If I go to the mountains wings would be nice. If I go to the shore I might want gills. Or a nice shell. Birds beaks are pointy. A shell I think would be, you know, nice. er. Than being eaten. Maybe it is what we need. What do you need?" It was an odd but direct question, and perhaps it expected an answer or not.
Now that's a bit of consideration to be had. The golem takes a step back, and the long grass folds around her feet, and straightens up where she's been, covering her tracks for her as if it's her faithful dog. The Hedge isn't usually nearly so considerate at all; today it helps, at least. Eventually, having turned her head and looking off toward the wall of trees, she turns her face back toward the caterpillar-creature. "I would steal the fire from the heart of the desert," she answers. "Instead of the cheap copies that it gave me for my eyes." There's scorn, there, in the subtle way that this Elemental emotes.
Nu-na tilted their head and asked "Well why would you need to wait? If it is something you know you would do, why not take it? It is as much yours as theirs. I think it is a gift we give to our self. I think, I do not want to be eaten by gulls. I do like their wings though." The knitting started slowly and Nu'na asked Gisa curiously, "Do you think they would get upset if I had my own? Should Nu'an worry about opinions of things that would eat Nu'na?" There was some consternation as they looked to the Golem. It was not unlike the question posed to Gisa. 'Does one sweat the wants of those that would take things from you or do as you were meant to?'
Another very, very long silence, and the golem doesn't respond with words. She doesn't directly respond at all, actually, for a very long time. Her answer is one of flickering eye-flames that spark and move, of hands that flex at her sides as if she could, at this moment, tear out the desert's fiery heart with them. (What that would mean for her, sometimes, one doesn't think about in moments of change.) She takes a deep breath, turns her attention back to Nu'na, and for a moment, it's possible to tell where her eyes focus -- the flames move, tracking motion, as they never have done before. "It is a good knitting," she answers, as if that is the answer she needs to give, in its entirety.
Nu'na smiled to the Golem warmly and looked up. The smile was genuine and wistful. "I think I will make myself a humming bird. I feel like a humming bird and if I need to give the wings back later I will make something else. But yes right now? That is what I'll do. Did you want to come with me? I can make a cocoon for you too." Nu'na looked at the quills in hand knitting the caterpillar hair if Nu'na's body around their self and then at the ceramic skin of Gisa. Objectivity they warned "It might turn out more crunchy like an egg. I was an egg once. It was lice. Easier to roll where you want to go if you are not done yet. Not as comfortable though. Or a tea pot. Those take heat well! We can knit you into a teapot I think. I am told people love tea."
Of all the strange 'it's probably a trap' offers that Gisa has ever gotten, 'do you want me to put a cocoon around you so that you can go on a magical journey with me to be a hummingbird', from someone she's never met before, in the Hedge, is probably one of them. Instead, she answers, "Maybe if you show me, I can knit myself. Change is better if you do it yourself. And I have my own hair. It will be a little crunchy, my hair is copper." She pats her curly, barely-contained hair with her hand, and her ceramic palm makes an almost musical 'ting ting' sound off of her metal locks, wound tight as they are into the braid that hangs down to the middle of her back. She probably has the most amazing jewfro after a shower.
Nu'na had a hint of a knowing. There was an excitement that didn't seem advantageous so much as it was anxious. Nu'na was excited. from who knows where did Nu'na come up with two porcupine like quills, perhaps sturdy fibers provided from the fuzzy coat that seemed to comprise Nu'na personally. They were offered to Gisa and while bendy like wire, were sturdy enough to not break under emphatic grip. A caterpillar made of moxie and strong nylon perhaps? There was careful instruction on how to start which wasn't unlike actual knitting. "First you make a knot made of where you are from. Then you make little slip knots next made out of the steps you are traveling... I have shorter legs so my loops are closer together" Many steps for one stride. Tiny tiny legs Nu'na was sitting on. "Then you loop your purpose around the quill like this and really think about why you are doing this for you. The draw the material around... the hook- don't... poke your finger. Like... sorta like this. Think about what you will do with that change and the pattern will start to shape itself as you and your cocoon become one. Like playing a flugelhorn. But lighter." These two things had no discernible relationship to anyone but Nu'na.
These things are metaphorical but also real: in the world of the Lost, what was metaphorical was also real. (This is also true of Judaism, depending on who you ask, so really, Gisa gets these things coming and going.) She takes the quills -- definitely not going to lose those, one way or the other, Nana will likely pay a pretty penny for something like those if she can hang on to them -- and tucks them into her fingers, plucking a single one of her long, copper hairs and pulling it out of her braid with a long, slow screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee of metal on metal. If nothing else, she'll get a knitting lesson, right?
She listens, she watches, she follows along. Slim, bendable copper wire around nylon Hob needles.
There was a hum partly like a bee and maybe in part a humming bird. Nu'na was blythly focusing on the knitting checking in on Gisa, "Where you want to go. Remember it is not taking from others, it's about adding to you. This has nothing to do with desert gulls. It is about what is ours, and what we will be. I don't want the gulls to say say in that or I'll wind up a baby turtle and move so much slower than I already do." Nu'na signed and paused, eye...twitching... at the scratching of metal on ceramic but seemed to be less startled as it settled into being a regular sound rather than a sudden one.
The hum is a nice pitch, pleasing to the ear, and on a similar pitch to one of her favorite songs. Gisa sings -- not tunelessly, but she's never going to be on Tamarack Falls' Got Talent or anything -- along as the Nu'na is humming: "Mi chamocha Ba'elim Adonai? Mi chamocha ne'dar bakodesh." Songs of freedom are a particular favorite of goylomim, after all, and Miriam's Song is the ultimate song thereof. The metal on ceramic between her fingers is an odd little sound, like a fork against a plate, but gentle enough once she is comfortable with the knitting. "Mmm," she agrees, but then is humming Mi Chamocha instead of singing it. Humming is better for goylomim than singing. They are not especially musically talented.
And she knits.
The knitting was slow and the sky was getting darker or maybe it was that the cocoon was going rather well. How much time was passing at the crossroads of the trod was anyone's guess. There were visions that visited, the purpose becoming singular of focus and eating concepts of time. And it was night. Was she still knitting, or paused in thought? When Gisa looked up it was dark and the ocean could be heard still faint and far away. In this shroud of change through the shadows afforded by the knit wires there was a like cocoon that looked more like an orange upright acorn. As the morning light crossed the horizon it bounced through out the inside of the metal shell, heating it up with refracted light and intensity. Was it a fire sparked by the rays of the morning sun refracted through the reforming of the Dawn's purpose of self? Perhaps. Either coincidence or deliberate who was to say.
From outside there were words from a messenger that felt more... home than they have before, ringing like a calling bell inside the metal shell, "Shalom."
She hadn't really intended to keep knitting past the time when the messenger showed up, but maybe they never did show, or showed and missed her, or ... it doesn't matter. The golem got lost in a task, simple as that. The warmth of the fire spread through her limbs, loosening her joints, heating her muscles, as if she had just stretched her entire body, that fully-oxygenated feeling muscles get. Ah, yes.
And then she realized that -- oh -- she had knit herself into a shell. How did she not... actually really notice that? She had noticed things during the night but gone back on to knitting. If this had been a trap, well. It would have been a good one.
She stretches inside the shell, and answers, rather blithely, "Shalom!" The flames in her eyes dance, following where she looks, as she seeks a way out of her... cocoon.
Sometimes the way out is easier than the way in. The coils of copper seemed to loosen enough to unravel like a sweater. There was a messenger dressed in attire that was lose to move in swiftly, but also in subtle layers to keep his burden light and adjust to heat, cold, and wind accordingly. He looked concerned while trying not to be rude or intrusive speaking in her fist tongue "It would please me greatly if I was able to offer you any assistance." As the cocoon fell away Nu'na was nowhere to be found. On the stump was a note though and two quills.
The note read: Thank you for helping talk me through my choice. I picked a road. It will be your turn. There are no bad choices, there is only what we do with what we find. These are my last quills and my first. Take them just in case. Also don't trip over the stump. It is hard. Ow. -Nu'na
She smiles somewhat awkwardly at the messenger, happier with herself for a moment as she climbs out. "I am well, I am well," she assures him, speaking in easy Sephardic-inflected modern Hebrew. "I just need to gather this all up, and then we can talk." Like she's leaving anything of herself in the Hedge? No. Lots of wire -- unless it starts to disintegrate or something -- and then she picks up the note, her eyes flickering back and forth as she reads the note. "Oh. Wow." The shin on her forehead overflows with fire for a moment, flaring so brightly, and the golem laughs a little as she reads the note. "Oh my."
She has already chosen, in the long hours knitting, and at some point she'll notice the way her eyes now track the direction she looks, and that her studies go so much faster every morning. She literally will read more Talmud before 8 am than most people do all day.
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