Serge the hippo sat at the rim of the canyon, looking down into the abyss of desert stillness. Rock and bones, and crumbles of dust cradled in the deepness, all looking alike, distant and lacking detail. He let his legs dangle, swinging loosely along to a tune in his head, as he squinted through his sweat to better view and guess which was which. "That is my left leg!", he determined, and laughed until his throat went dry. He finished his water, then tossed in the bottle, counting the seconds of it's fall to the bottom. It landed on a hippo skull, he thought, but probably not.
The hours passed, slow and hot, as Serge stared into the barren drop. Once or twice he stretched down his toe, as if dipping himself in, and experiencing the hole. He sighed on occasion, and chalked messages on the ledge, which when he reread them, he spoke as if deaf.
He admired the landscape as the shadows shortened to their roots and then sprouted anew towards the east. It was mid afternoon when a second male arrived. Far along the way of the canyon's edge, a strapping young hippo steadily sat himself, peering into the empty, ominous space below. And before the shadows grew much longer, there came more.
Hippo upon hippo skirted the bone-dry cauldron, keeping to themselves, politely dividing the distance between one another, so once everyone was present they were equally very close. On what room they were spared, they scribbled with their chalks while musing at the hole. Some scratching things out as fast as they wrote, in dissatisfaction and passionate hopelessness. Some recited their writing aloud, indirectly boasting to those who could overhear, with proverbs and limericks of enlightenment and despair. And every few hippos, one wept while he stared.
No one ate or drank while the sun slowly roasted the weatherless sky, and scavengers circled, feasting their eyes. The hippopotami tasted from the void, dabbling in the depths of the massive hotbox, and sniffing for the souls entombed in it's rock.
A fellow beside Serge swayed and hummed hypnotically, building momentum and spiritual intensity, which led to a near slip into the fate of his fascination. He barely caught himself, squealing, scrambling backwards to safety, panting and stupefied. When his senses returned, he scooted back to the edge to continue his observations. He looked down the cliffside, and then reviewed his writing to discover he'd smudged a imperative section.
"No..", he whispered in Serge's direction. "What did it say? What was it? I should know this, I only just wrote it." Tapping his chalk on the valuable smear, he tugged at his whiskers and scoffed inconsiderately. "A hippo is worth a thousand.. A hippo is worth a thousand... what?? What was it??" He scoffed and scoffed, and squirmed with no mercy. Serge could endure the disturbance no further.
"Deaths," Serge offered, suppressing his annoyance. "What?", the other hippo responded, surprised.
"Deaths. A hippo is worth a thousand deaths," he repeated, feeling more sympathetic in the presence of less scoffs.
The other hippo whispered the words in relief, and then awe. "Wow," he said a moment later, "Did I write that?"
"No. I mean, I don't know. But it sounds right. So, if you can't remember whatever it was before.." Serge shrugged, and acted as if something new had appeared in the hole.
"No. I couldn't. You should use it. It's.. It's indescribable! I couldn't possibly take that from you," the struggling author insisted, resurfacing his feeling of misfortune.
"No, it's fine," Serge consoled, wanting to have been done with the matter. "I have enough written already. And besides, all I did was suggest one little word. Aside from that, you wrote the entire thing. I can't take it, it's yours."
"But what if it's better than what you've got there? That wouldn't be fair. You would hate me..", the other persisted, visibly paining.
"No, I'm good," Serge said shortly. He patted reassuringly on the surface where his messages lay, without removing his eyes from the canyon. The other hippo leaned on his side a mere inch, and waited for Serge's reaction. When there was none, he leaned in enough to read the chalk work of Serge's that occupied the shared space between them.
Moments later, he leaned back the way he came, where he then stayed strangely paralyzed. He sat stiffly upright, speechless and seeing nothing. He couldn't scoff or sigh, or slide over the rock side. Every muscle seemed robbed of it's life, save for the ones that allowed him to cry. Serge disguised his renegade smile by forcing a yawn, and checking his tan lines. He was wrinkling well at his bends and his joints. The ash on his elbows was impressively crisp, and his tongue was so parched that it cracked at his lips.
The daylight slugged on, full of baking and drying, and scribbling, while savoring the pit. A band of melancholy gray raisons placed purposefully at the threshold of mortality, battling the burdens of both body and mind. The rise and wane of sobbing buzzed soft and ever present, like a currant through a wire. By sundown, Serge had witnessed four take the plunge, three of which he was sure were alive when they jumped.
At midnight, when the moon hung high, and the stars were their brightest, casting a silvery shimmer that mirrored on the rock and it's occupants, an orange speck on the horizon of the dead desert land sparked an active alertness throughout the sullen band of men. A shuffling of anxious hippos clamored as the flicker from the horizon drew near. Last-minute revisions scratched away at the ground, as some pinched at the ash of their skin to look fouler.
The neighbor of Serge's that sat frozen and leaking, awoke from his trance to print the word 'deaths' over his pestilent smudge, but did not cease weeping. Serge proofread his own creative deductions while pretending to have a nasal obstruction. He watched as the flicker from afar bobbed and rested, and beaconed at the heart. The longer he waited, the larger the flame, and less of the clamor and bustle remained.
Until at last, when the moon was it's lowest, and the sky was washed gray, a female led by torchlight met the males of the canyon, a mile off from Serge. She flirted by dabbing their faces with hankies, and read their adages with lengthy introspection. She moved on to the next, one by one. Most who she passed, packed up and went home, with the exception of a handful she proposed might be options (and those feeding the vultures, ignored through the process).
Closer she trotted towards Serge, blushing and streaked with mascara. He could smell the perfume from the hair of her tail, and the vapors of her underbelly misting the morning stale. To a hippo so dehydrated, it quenched the very instinct to survive.
"Oh, my!", she marveled at the male that Serge had helped write, whose statuesque sobbing propelled her fragrant lifeline. The lack of intrigue or acknowledgement that reflected in the way he didn't respond to her, wove mysteries in her imagination, and a primitive need to persuade him.
He wept, unavailable to her counsel and advances. She crossed her arms and sampled his quote, "A hippo is worth thousand deaths." Her knees went so weak, her weight nearly crushed them. "Oh, wow!", her voice trembled, "You poor tortured philosopher." She ran her fingers down his leathery posture. "Let me take care of you," she breathed into his ear, reaching to rub the crack in the ash of his elbow. It was almost a done deal, until she saw Serge, instantly melting her pheromones.
The ash on his elbows was thicker than earth, and cracked twice as deep as the pitted desert. "My, my!", she fanned her damp lashes, realigning her sight onto Serge. "How long have you been here?", she asked with concern.
"How long is forever?", he finger-gunned and winked.
Her pretty pupils dilated. "That really makes you think.. About love and pain.."
"Yeah, it's uh.. lot to take in," he self-entertained.
Her scent was a potion that sped up the blood, that soaked him with visions of tens of his sons. His mind filled with images, as she talked, and he nodded. "That's so bla bla bla," came up the most often.
A hippo still waiting to meet her cried out, diving into the atmosphere of the canyon's dry mouth. "Hi!", she waved at the fleeting handsome bachelor. Serge wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and held her tighter when the splat hit. "Oh, no," she cringed, at the same time spraying her invisible mist. "I wish that I could do that," she breathily moaned.
Serge formally patted her sumptuous skin. "There, there," he told her, "The saddest of angels wear the hyena's grin." He swam in the river that flowed to his nostrils.
The thought of it's trueness sent her aback. "That's exactly what I do.. Did you already write that?" She stepped back once more to throughly uncover the wisdom he recorded.
She gasped, and exhaled a flood of aroma. Then, burst into tears that bled from her soul. She took in each word, opening new doors to her consciousness. Beauty, and darkness, and analogies ravished them. The poignant perception wracked her with fever. The writing on the desert floor spun in white streams. Her hand graced her forehead, palm facing up. She tilted, then teetered, wincing vulnerable nothings.
In a swirl of emotion, she pivoted on her ankle, twirling a half circle, angled for the crater. Her free arm flapped like an oil slicked wing, fighting the gravity, tiring swiftly. Her life flashed before her as she tipped towards the abyss. A childhood of horror that wrought a woman in distress. So brief and bitter-ending, she thought, letting go of her efforts to not faint. She floated for less than a second, and dropped into Serge's expecting embrace.
"That was a close one. Are you are ok?" He held her with his head in her foggy bouquet.
"I don't want to talk about it," she feigned, having too many thoughts to choose one to explain.
"Do you want to go get a drink, or something?", he asked, to her acceptance, knowing that the truth was that she would talk, and talk forever.
And he carried her off into the sunrise as soul mates, friends, and lovers.
..And the hippo who was worth a thousand deaths unfroze and found strength, to scoff at his chalk with a thunderous blow, and brave the terrain to his mother.
