#317 - Rattle
What do you still have from when you were young?
From a certain perspective, there is no difference between space and time, and either can be traversed as easily as the other; but to navigate time is as navigating on the widest, most mightiest of oceans, bound only by infinite, unattainable horizons. Here, the only landmarks are those things that persist in the mind, that are kept and held, made solid by thought and memory, by association, by physical focus.
Here, then, he remembers, from multiple angles, a crib in a room in a house in Alaska, before -- before Cable and Apocalypse and Sinister and the T/O virus. Before Jean returned, there was a moment where everything was as close to perfect as things ever get, when it looked like there could be happy ever afters and a family in the middle of nowhere. There was a baby, a crib, a toy -- a red, red rattle.
It had a handle, ball ended in both directions, one small to keep the rings from falling off, one large to hold the rat-rat-rattle. He liked to shake it and gum at it and throw it away and then cry when it was gone gone gone down the back of that radiator that kept him warm through the cold nights. Stupid loved rattle, left behind when Sinister came to retrieve them. Loved, and held, and remembered. A road sign to take yourself back there.
If you had it. If you had that...
The memory is held. The memory -- but where is your rattle, Christopher? Where is that proof of existence, lost and found and now lost again? And where do you stand on the sea of time without it?
What do you still have?
From a certain perspective, there is no difference between space and time, and either can be traversed as easily as the other; but to navigate time is as navigating on the widest, most mightiest of oceans, bound only by infinite, unattainable horizons. Here, the only landmarks are those things that persist in the mind, that are kept and held, made solid by thought and memory, by association, by physical focus.
Here, then, he remembers, from multiple angles, a crib in a room in a house in Alaska, before -- before Cable and Apocalypse and Sinister and the T/O virus. Before Jean returned, there was a moment where everything was as close to perfect as things ever get, when it looked like there could be happy ever afters and a family in the middle of nowhere. There was a baby, a crib, a toy -- a red, red rattle.
It had a handle, ball ended in both directions, one small to keep the rings from falling off, one large to hold the rat-rat-rattle. He liked to shake it and gum at it and throw it away and then cry when it was gone gone gone down the back of that radiator that kept him warm through the cold nights. Stupid loved rattle, left behind when Sinister came to retrieve them. Loved, and held, and remembered. A road sign to take yourself back there.
If you had it. If you had that...
The memory is held. The memory -- but where is your rattle, Christopher? Where is that proof of existence, lost and found and now lost again? And where do you stand on the sea of time without it?
What do you still have?