Trigger: The world beneath the surface.
Some winter nights, the pain becomes too much to handle, the cold of the June rains seeping in through the glass of the window and burrowing deep into my joints as I sleep, scraping burning fingers of nitrogen ice across the scars that lie deep within, invisible to the eye.
And by the time I realise this, the pain will have taken possession of every nerve ending, and I awaken in a fetal tuck, muscles spasming with every breath that I take.
On nights like this, I pull the stick to me and pour the burning agony down into the metal, sinking it into the core and temper of the dull flowsteel and burying it out of reach.
Out of sight, out of mind.
They don't talk about this, outside. Some people emphasise the glamour and beauty of the job, and that is true. Some emphasise the horror and the darkness, and that, too, is true.
It's all true. It's everything that's on the surface.
But the pain that lasts long after you turn in your wings is not something they ever mention, because neither side can use it, and the bittersweet knowledge that you did your duty to the limit of your ability is not something that they mention either, because it is not something either side can understand.
There is the world you see, and there is the world that underlies it, and all the things on the surface that the parts of the world use to interact with one another are nothing more than shadows of what lies beneath, flags and symbols of the true selves that we are at our core.
When the pain has faded enough, I slide up against the headboard, crossing my legs and leaning the stick across my shoulder, and I stare out over the bay at the stars that I cannot see.
The truth is no longer important to this world, because it no longer has the capacity or the patience to look for it. Perhaps it never did.
But it is important to us, because only we who inhabit the space behind our eyes knows what's there.
Everyone has their own story. Most people simply pretend that there isn't, and live on the surface, for the surface.
And that's fine, if that's what they want to be.
But I know better, and the pain reminds me every day that this is so.
And so on nights like this, when the water comes down from the sky in sheeting rain and the cold seeps into my bones, I watch the misted skyline, and wait for the winter sun to rise.
For Winsen, who asked.
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