Back for another week, dear Dream Steem community. And I'm staying with the theme of animal people. Enjoy!

😭

There tears were all he knew for a time. He had been singing along to an old song. Then his voice has broken, and the tears arrived.

What, one might ask, are the value of tears? And, what is worth crying over?

But this man, Duncan, obviously wasn't in a speculative mood. He was letting out some strange noises too, like cries. There was a heat to the tears, as they ran like the rain, like a river, like an ocean current, like the everlasting waterfall, wet like all things water, out his eyes and down his cheeks, dripping from his chin, falling wherever.

Right now, he wasn't concerned with where he was, which was thankfully home, but all he wanted was to be reunited with his Egyptian cat who he'd oddly named Wizard. Duncan's friends had called him Tank, but certainly Hunter would have been most apt.

The whole name controversy didn't phase Duncan in his grief...his feelings spoke of distance, the desire to be near something that is absent, and emptiness, without you.

He had been listening to the Rolling Stones, and then he was gone. The man who had the words Strong and Brave tattooed above his collar bones lost himself in tears.

When he finally began to regain a sense of self, he started talking rapidly to himself, saying, "I miss you so much, buddy, I miss you so much. Why can't you be here now? I just don't get it."

Still a little bleary, and with the fuzziness of feeling of just having cried deeply, Duncan drove down to the river. It was May, and the river was high.

Vaping off a wildberry disposable, a bad habit he had picked up in the working class, he climbed down a granite boulder to get closer to the flowing water. His sneaker slipped across the rock, and he fell backwards, dashing his head on the rock, and down, into the river, where he floated unconsciously away. The vape floated alongside him, like a dutiful servant.

While he was being pulled along by the current, he dreamt of a vile chorus of voices shrilly asking him repeatedly the same question: "Do you accept yourself?"

"Yes, I accept myself," Duncan cried out, in the darkness that engulfed him. Then he awakened.

A pair of beady eyes looked down at him. "No, you do not accept yourself," the creature spoke to him as if from within his own head, which was aching pretty good right now. "You do not accept that you are now Squirrel."

"I am not Squirrel. I am Human."

"I saved your life. A life given, and another given up. You are now Squirrel."

"What do I do, as a Squirrel?"

"Save your acorns. And remember the trees!"

It was a long walk, in sodden clothes, back to Duncan's car. But he made it.

TBC

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#tears #steemexclusive #writing