Comprehension.

After lunch, Soren went straight over to his bed for a nap, and Luci mostly kept to herself. I don’t think she was much in the mood for association and casual conversation, so Etand and I adjourned to the front porch so we could share our thought and analyses of this mutual experience. Clouds were setting in, and it looked as if daylight would fade soon. Without a clock around, we had to make our own judgment as to the time of day.

“It’s quiet out here,” I observed.

“Yes,” he replied. “There were birds out earlier, but I haven’t heard them in a while. What time do you think it is?”

I took a brief glance at my bare wrist in dismay. “Well, without my watch I’d guess it was probably late afternoon.”

We both nodded and paused in silent contemplation. I looked back at the doorway to our cabin and noticed a sign above the entry that read “HOLDING UNIT,” and there were four horizontal bars etched below the letters.

“You know there’s a sign over our door, right?” I asked.

“No, I wasn’t aware of that. Is it anything important?”

“Probably not,” I replied. “It just says ‘Holding Unit,’ and it’s got four lines on it. What do you think we’re being held for?”

“Who knows… this is as strange to me as I’m sure it is to you.”

“Do you think those four lines are because there’s four of us?” I wondered aloud.

“You know, in some cultures, ‘four’ represents death,” Etand added.

That idea had me taken aback. “You don’t think – are we dead?”

“No,” he stoically replied with a high degree of assertion. “This isn’t my death. This is a test, the nature of which I have yet to discover.”

“Well how would you explain the four of us waking up in this place with no idea of what came before?”

Etand looked at me earnestly, as if he could not only see me, but see into me. “I can’t,” he said.

I sat there for a minute or two, mulling over our lack of knowledge. At first I thought all of it was a dream, but it was lasting too long. I took a peek back through the doorway to see that Luci had joined Soren in a peaceful slumber, so I figured maybe this would give me a chance to question Etand some more for ideas of how I might solve this enigma. He seemed to be at ease with everything, and he was incredibly knowledgeable when it came to evaluating our situation. “This looks like a camp,” I volunteered.

Etand took a whiff of our surroundings. “It smells like a mountain forest. They want us to feel comfortable.”

“Yeah, but who’s ‘they’?” I continued.

“They would be the ones keeping us here.”

“Don’t they realize we could leave? I mean, what’s keeping us from escaping?”

“Ah-ha. I already talked about this with Luci. Where would you go, Evan?”

He had me there. Where would I go? I didn’t even know where I was, much less where I could escape to if I left. Then Etand revealed something that gave me chills.

“I washed up in the surf, same as you,” he said.

I couldn’t figure out what surprised me more about that statement, whether it was the fact that Etand had been through what I had experienced on the beach, or that he knew about me washing ashore.

“How did you know that?” I exclaimed.

“Calm down,” he begged. “You probably don’t know this, but I heard you speaking with one of the riders.”

“The riders?”

“The men on the beach, riding the horses.”

I knew he was referring to the Centaurs, but I couldn’t bear to shake the image of what he thought they were, so I just replied, “Oh, yeah… those men. So from listening to my voice, you’re sure it was me?”

“Of course.”

“Well, didn’t any of that seem surreal to you? Doesn’t this whole scenario seem kind of odd?”

“Oh, I can assure you I find it very odd. However, I’m confident that answers will be forthcoming, so why worry about this now when only patience can guide us?”

After these types of cryptic comments, I figured I should engage Etand even more by asking him to discuss what, until then, I had only been thinking. “Is this a dream?”

“Quite possibly,” he replied, “or reality may only appear as we choose to see it.”

“I’ve always suspected that. There was always a part of me that thought people’s idea of reality was unique to each person, like colors and things never matched up completely, but we all shared common bonds.”

“Interesting,” he said. “What kinds of common bonds?”

“Oh, things like words or morals, or even physical properties to some extent. Maybe there are just multiple realities, and they just happen to touch on occasion, or maybe reality is a dream we wake up from when we die. I don’t know though.”

“Then again, you or I may be a part of reality’s dream.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What you basically described was solipsism, the idea that reality is imagined, and that you are the driving force behind your own consciousness. However, consider that reality is consciousness. That is to say, reality is an energy that conjures events and people such as ourselves to have experiences that we would describe as unique to our individuality. Suppose our lives are merely byproducts of basic existence, and then what do we have? Only the happenings of things in the present can dictate our actions. That is way I’m not making an effort to escape.”

Needless to say, I was fairly surprised at Etand’s acceptance of our situation. “Wouldn’t you want to make some effort to change things?” I asked.

“If change occurs, it occurs. I’ll accept what fate has given me.”

“I can’t do that to myself. I have to have answers.”

“Not all answers come from asking questions.”

“How do you figure?”

“Maybe if you refrain from questioning these things, the answers will come to you. Just be patient.”

“Easy to say when your head’s not full of all these complex scenarios.”

“Well, why not take a walk to clear your head?” he suggested.

“Around here?! I don’t even know where I am. What if I get lost?”

“I have a strong feeling you won’t get lost. Trust me.”

Why would I trust a person I only recently met, and who is in the same predicament I am? However, something in my gut told me to take his advice. “You really think this is a good idea?” I asked.

“I think it will be most beneficial to you, I do.”

With that, I stood up, got off the porch and out into the open. I took a deep breath and looked around at the surrounding forest. Its beauty and tranquility practically begged me to explore it. So I took one last look at our “holding unit” and set out, not even knowing where this journey would lead me.

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