Invisible World by Suzanne Weyn

around my body.
    In this paradise I felt myself to be a sand-coated barnacle, a seabird with broken bones tossed on the shore, a crab with a cracked shell. It was as if sand had found its way into my very joints. My physical complaints were too numerous to count — jagged fingernails, blistered lips, splinters, and cuts, to name only a few.
    The most awful hurt by far was the roar in my belly. The twist and churn of my stomach was like no pain I’d ever endured. Its agony reached into my brain, filling me with a furious rage at one moment and deathlike despair at the next. Yet I didn’t have the strength required to get up and search for food. I didn’t even have the stamina to sit up from my prone position.
    Though the weather was hot, my teeth chattered. And that’s when — through the blur of my rising tears — I saw the miracle.
    A mere arm’s reach from me was a green basket woven from some sort of reed. The shinier, more vivid green showing on top seemed to be a lining made from some sort of big leaf. Reaching as quickly as my aching arms could manage, I pulled the woven basket toward me. Inside was a hand-carved wooden bowl filled to the top with brown rice.
    Was this a dream? If it was, I didn’t care.
    With trembling hands, I shoveled the sticky grains into my mouth, barely chewing or tasting, only consuming. In a few more minutes, the nutty goodness spread through my body, wrapping me in bliss. Never had any other food given me such complete pleasure.
    But who had left this bowl of rice?
    Of course I hoped that the rice meant that there were people nearby who could help me. Why had they not shown themselves?
    The only thing to do was to set out in search of these people. To keep cool, I walked at the edges of the water — splashing through, the ocean breeze whipping my nightgown, tossing my hair. My muscles still ached, but the rice and the beauty of my surroundings had gone far to revive my body and spirit.
    My travels took me along marshland bordered by tall grass. Birds called back and forth to one another, and insects buzzed and chirped in a nonstop cacophony. I jumped back, startled, when a pair of whitish-blue wings with the same expanse as my own outspread arms rose up from out of the grass.
    An angel? It was a fantastical thought, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.
    The next moment revealed the creature to be a most beautiful bird with a long graceful neck and elongated legs. I’d seen it in a book once — a blue heron. The bird landed in the marsh waters, dipping its neck to fish for its supper. Rising again, with a smallish fish in its beak, it once more spread its majestic wings and flew away.
    It wasn’t all perfection, though. I began swatting high-whining mosquitoes as I walked. I also cut my heel, just a little, on a sharp stick.
    The marsh seemed to end at the foot of a shadowy wooded area. Immense, wide-spreading oaks with thick branches emanating from a single thick trunk grew close together. Each oak was draped in fat strands of Spanish moss that fell straight down from its branches. The giant trees were so tightly packed that I had the impression that I would be entering an interior rather than an outdoor space if I were to step under the canopy of their leaves.
    I considered exploring this area, but feared going in where there might be unfamiliar wildlife and where hazards would be less easily seen. After I knew my way around a little better, I would venture into the tangled forest.
    Heading back the same way I had come, I followed the marshland and then the shoreline back to the spot at which I’d begun. I could recognize the place easily because I’d left the woven basket atop the boulder beside which I’d slept.
    By the time I got back to the boulder, the sun was well past its highest point — I guessed it to be between three and four o’clock. I was once again famished … and very thirsty.
    And I also