Song-spiration Saturday: Can’t Find My Way Home

Posted on by Teagan Riordain Geneviene

Saturday, December 28, 2024

by Teagan via Night Cafe
by Teagan via Night Cafe

Hello everyone, I hope the holiday season is treating you well.  Since I usually post on Saturday and Wednesday, this should be my final blog post of the year. I’m closing out 2024 with another re-run.  It’s a “song-spiration” short story.  Haha, the title might make the song more appropriate to New Year’s Eve.  You’ll see what I mean.

Above video of Steve Winwood performing “Can’t Find My Way Home”

This video for the Steve Winwood song is one of my all-time favorite singalongs.  The music and words are actually thought provoking and haunting.  Or maybe that’s because a reoccurring theme in my nightmares dreams is being unable to get home.  The lyrics were only a springboard for my imagination.  My story is not meant to define the lyrics.  It’s an urban fantasy. (That means settings in our real world, in a city, town, or other “urban” place, but magic and/or other fantasy elements are in the story.)

Can’t Find My Way Home

Urban Falls

Goksutaymaz at Pixabay
Goksutaymaz at Pixabay

Evening’s golden glow touched the tops of the tallest trees.  Time grew short.  Month after month she had searched for guideposts.  The night the moon appeared to be almost full, she found the first one…  Although finding it again proved to be no simple matter.

Listen…  She hesitated at the soft noise of a breeze stirring leaves.

Chaos had more influence on this world when her moon was full.  Earth’s satellite was only close enough to that phase for three nights during each moon.  The way back to that first guidepost had illuded Eris each of those nights.  If she didn’t locate the guideposts and then the threshold before nightfall, then she would have to wait until the next full moon.

Vibrant orange streaked the sky as the sun set.  Stress quickened her heartrate.

Guideposts were not part of the natural order of this world.  The physicality of the place continually exerted itself, pushing chaos to conform to its order.  The path to each one altered perpetually.  Worse, the threshold — the entry point, was even more apt to change than the guideposts.

Perhaps it was counterintuitive.  One would think that guideposts and the threshold at the gate of her illusive home would blend into nature, making them easier to hide.  The guideposts had to flow.  Wouldn’t a brook or creek be the logical thing?  No.  Chaos was required to make pathways that would lead her home.  Rather than products of nature, manmade constructs were necessary.

“Urban falls,” Eris whispered.

Mherfurt at Pixabay
Mherfurt at Pixabay

Looking over her shoulder, she couldn’t shake the vague feeling of being followed.  Exhausted, she didn’t know if she could create enough chaos to hide her presence for even one more night.

Rubber-soled trainers whispered against the pavement as Eris hurried down a neighborhood street.  The subdivision bordered a park.  Where she passed, she made small changes, shifting details away from order, generating minor confusion.  A yellow fire hydrant became red, a rectangular mailbox became a cylinder, a weed became a flower.

The creation of chaos was an innate ability for Eris.  It couldn’t be traced the way magic could.

Splashes of running water came to her ears.  She was on the right track.  Furtively she looked over her shoulder.  It was almost as though she heard a breath.

If anyone followed, then they were well disguised.  Stopping at a curbside tree, she moved behind its branches.  She put a finger to a leaf, moving it just enough to let her see.

Eris opened her mind, in attempt to feel the use of magic.  Invisibility or shape-shifting would take a noticeable amount of power.  However, the amount of magic necessary to make a pursuer go unnoticed was slight.

Nothing, she thought, though the sense of black night was closer than it should be.

Sunset’s afterglow tinted the sky with magenta and lilac.  The sound of the water was closer.  Eris took a deep breath, preparing to move onward.

The tree… How stupid of me!  I touched that tree.

Regretfully she altered the tree enough to hide her tracks.  The oak became a maple, a little more chaos.  Her strength ebbed.

In a moment she reached a manmade waterfall at the crest of a hill.  It ran beside a paved path in the park.  Water flowed gently down a stairway of flat stones.

Yes, this one is right.  But I’ve gotten this far twice already.  Now I have to find the second guidepost, and then the threshold, she thought.  And I have to find it before dark.  The guideposts can only be reached during the “between” of evening.

I’ve stayed here too long.  If I can’t find the way back tonight, I’ll become too much a part of this world.  I might never be able to go home.

Knowing the properties of that particular stream should help lead her feet to the next guidepost, she splashed into the water.  The cold water quickly soaked her trainers.  Eris didn’t care.  It helped cool her down from the sticky heat that clung to the air.

She looked toward the spot behind her, which had been a patch of sunlight.  The gold light of evening was overtaken by sunset.  Soon twilight would be gone and then it would be too late.

A mental sensation pricked at her.  The hair on her arms stood on end.  Scanning the world around her, she couldn’t see the threat.  Yet she felt it.

by Teagan via Perchance
by Teagan via Perchance

What do I do? she wondered, frantic.

Eris wouldn’t be able to make changes to a guidepost to cover her tracks, not without using magic.  There was no guarantee it would work even then.

Focusing on a honeysuckle vine that grew to the edge of the human-laid steps of the waterfall, she nudged it to become a bramble.  That would help hide her passage and perhaps slow anyone who pursued her.  If anyone really was following.

The plant obeyed.  She hurried down the wet stone stairs as quietly as possible.

“There are pleasures in this world,” a part of her mind seemed to say.  “Things you cannot experience or feel anywhere else.”

With a last squelch, her feet reached the end of the step-waterfall.  She ducked behind a metal box that held newspapers.  Holding her breath, she listened.  She still felt a vague presence, but couldn’t detect more than the feeling.

Yes, but if I stay, I’ll have to be constantly on guard for those who would use me, or harm me, she thought back at herself.  This place is not safe for me.  I can never be truly at ease.  My jaw will be tense forever, my neck muscles will never relax.

“But isn’t the same true if you go home?” the inner voice questioned.  “The same and much worse too.  You know that you left because of horrible things.”

Eris shut out her thoughts.  Her wet trainers squished as she threaded her way across the park, between trees.

With a fleeting burst of positivity, she spotted the next guidepost.

Each one was progressively less natural.  The first was made of stones that had been placed by human hands.  The next was an organized jumble of rectangular “stones” that were poured to form precise shapes.  White water cascaded down seemingly random blocks in the center.

Eris knew the last leg of her journey was nearby.  She had to find the liminal, the entity who presided over the threshold.

“Crosser of boundaries, I beg admittance,” she plead between shuddering breaths.

by Teagan via Night Cafe

Coming gradually into form, she beheld the threshold.  Water flowed across every inch of a tall reddish stone wall.  It was ten feet thick.  A glass tunnel was set into the stone.  From her vantagepoint Eris could see the water that swirled on every side of the transparent tunnel.  Yet the thick glass kept the traveler safe and dry.

Abruptly, the presence that had been vague was powerful.  Despite lacking physical form, a blackness seemed to crash down around her.

No!  There should still be time! she thought and then realized all was not as it seemed.

That thing feels dark and solid as stone, but I know it has to be something else.  And the darkness it isn’t really night…  Not yet.  Whether or not it has solid form in this world, it might as well be.  I can’t pass through it.

The thick black wall shone like polished onyx.  A hairline crack began in the middle.  Light pushed through the black wall.  She could see the passage, the threshold.

But the light… Eris gasped as the light terrified her.  There are horrible things in the light!  How can that be.  Isn’t the light supposed to be good?

Abruptly realizing the onyx wall was the presence that had followed her, Eris prodded it.

“Are you the liminal or something else?  What are you?” she asked in a contradictory combination of fear and demand.

“Mobius,” replied a deep voice.

“What are you?” she insisted.

“I am,” he stated with intense emphasis.  “I am Mobius.  I am both your protector and the liminal who can give you access to the threshold.  I guard you against the terrors that wait in the light of your home.”

Eris plopped onto the ground, her knees refusing to support her.  She lifted a trembling hand toward the onyx wall, but didn’t try to touch it.

“Tell me, traveler,” Mobius continued coldly.  “Why do you try to go back through the threshold?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” Eris replied, trying to stop the way her voice shook.  “Isn’t everyone expected to stay tied to the place and people where they were born?  Aren’t I supposed to cherish those memories?  Am I not expected to try and remember everything I’ve forgotten?” she cried, overwhelmed with the confusion of the expectations other people forced onto her.  “All the bloody Shoulds!”

“No,” was the flat, matter-of-fact reply of Mobius.  “I protect you from that light.”

Eris gazed at the water that swirled beyond the glass of the nearby tunnel.  She began to see vicious forms in the water.  She knew they were evil despite the shining light that surrounded them.

“But I’m not safe here!  And I’m so very tired,” Eris responded, but her voice dwindled from a cry to a murmur.  “I remember enough to know it is worse there,” she mumbled with a weak motion of her head toward the slit of light that allowed her to see into the threshold.  “Despite what everyone thinks.  I’m in danger from both, from there and here.”

“I can always protect you from that place.  I keep you safe from those memories,” Mobius promised.  “There is no wrong in accepting my protection.  There is no shame in letting me keep you safe from them.”

“What about the dangers here?” Eris asked though she thought she already knew the answer.

Mobius was silent for a long moment.

“I could let you understand enough fragments of memory to help you protect yourself from what is here and now.  I will provide some guidance, if you accept it and some protection.  However, my greatest power is over memory, the terrors of the past.”

Eris nodded.  Exhausted, she leaned against the cool of the onyx wall.  The glass tunnel to the threshold dwindled, and the slit of light in the onyx wall winked out, leaving unmarred black.

“I don’t have to go back,” she murmured.  “It’s my choice.  No one else’s.”

The hard black wall took on a velvety softness when she leaned against it.  She closed her eyes for a moment, resting.

Then she stood.  Knowing Mobius was with her, she turned her back on the threshold.  Eris walked westward, into the deepening purple of the twilight sky.

♣ ♣ ♣

The end.

♣ ♣ ♣

LYRICS

Can’t Find My Way Home
Writer: Steve Winwood

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone
Somebody must change
You are the reason I’ve been waiting so long
Somebody holds the key.
But I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home
Come down on your own and leave your body alone
Somebody must change
You are the reason I’ve been waiting all these years
Somebody holds the keyBut I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home

But I can’t find my way home
But I can’t find my way home
But I can’t find my way home
But I can’t find my way home
Still I can’t find my way home
And I ain’t done nothing wrong
But I can’t find my way home

♣ ♣ ♣

Wishing you an easy close to 2024.  I love to hear from you, so friendly comments are encouraged.  See you next year!  Hugs.

♣ ♣ ♣

Of course, I must include the obligatory shameless self-promotion…

Real Steampunkery Tech:
True Contraptions of the Steam and Diesel Eras

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This is a link to everything in my Author Tool Chest series.

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Paperback:  relinks.me/B0DHD9BSJB

♣ ♣ ♣

 

This is a work of fiction.  Characters, names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 and 2024 by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene

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No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

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71 thoughts on “Song-spiration Saturday: Can’t Find My Way Home”

  5. Wow….your writing never ceases to amaze me. Great insight into normal life with all that we face and encounter!! Keep the faith and here’s to a positive 2025! Happy New Year to you and your cats from my wife and I and our two Maine Coon cats!!

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Thank you for your lovely take on this story, Rebecca. Meeting my own Mobius (in a therapy session) led to an important realization. Standard “methods” can sometimes do more harm than good, as with 5 years of putting knives into my PTSD memories to make the wounds constantly fresh. That is supposed to be a cure, and I don’t dispute anyone who says such made them whole. But I only got steadily worse. Mobius was there for good reason. Hugs on the wing.

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  7. A riveting story, Teagan. I know that there have been times in my life where I don’t feel at home, perhaps more than the other way around. Eris’s story resonated as she sought her way between there and here. The end and an affirmation of her choice was powerful, as was the guidance of Mobius. Thanks for the thought-provoking read, and Happy New Year.

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  8. Eris’s anxiety comes through clearly in your story. I like how she could change details in her surroundings. And I like Mobius’s offer of protection, while showing Eris that she doesn’t have to do “what she’s supposed to do.” She can make her own choice. That’s a powerful realization.

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    1. I really appreciate your comment, Dave. Often other people can’t see what is right for someone, because it’s so far away from what’s right for them. Moreover, with some people, if they admit to themselves that *can see* it, then they have to question too many things in their own life… so they choose not to see. Have a great rest of the year. Hugs.

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  10. Excellent short, Teagan.

    It is most meaningful, I am sure to many. I’ll never go back home. Yes, I visit my niece once in awhile, but we move in a direction that does not take us home. We are our home.

    Norm & I are home.

    Here with you is a home.

    Hugs!

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  13. ☆｡¸ ⭐️.`•.¸ *★ ♫ *´. ¸｡☆ ♫ ♥ ¸｡☆
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  14. An excellent Story Teagan… One we can perhaps take comfort from. For the Magic lies within each and everyone of us, when we remember it is WE who hold the power..

    Wishing you a wonderful Happy New Year dear Teagan… Thank you for the many wonderful magical stories.. I am sure many more will surface in 2025…. Lots of love my friend… EnJOY your Magical creations, for we are the ones who are the creators of our world..
    Much love your way xx ❤

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  16. I found the whole concept of Mobius in this story to be comforting. To know protection is there is a very satisfying feeling. The choice on what to do is then left up to the individual. Wishing you a very Happy New Year, Teagan.

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  18. Wonderful story, Teagan. That sinking feeling when you realise you can’t find your way back home is horrible. Great song. First time I’ve heard it. Better to get lost in a song.

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    1. Okay — you surprised me, Tim, about the song. Although I wasn’t familiar with it until about 4 years ago. It goes way back. There are many versions, and lots of covers by people not associated with the original. Although Winwood has never done a version of it that I don’t like, the one I used here is my favorite. Thanks for your great feedback about the story. Happy last Caturday of the year to you and the clowder. Hugs.

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    1. Why thank you so much, Robbie! That’s excellent feedback. I’ve had a new short story idea crawling around in my brain for a few days. If the seed will sprout, maybe I can begin the New Year with it… I’ve enjoyed your travel photos on Facebook. Wishing you a relaxing close to 2024. Hugs.

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  20. Many of my unpleasant dreams are about not finding my way home. Although they haven’t appeared for some time now, so perhaps I am content that I am home. Home is where my dogs are! Happy Happy New Year my dear Teagan. ❤️❤️

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    1. Yes, I suppose so, GP. Something out of the twisting twilight paths in my head, and the various “parts” of me. Mobius and the wall came from a therapy session. Certainly, where the sunny light is a cover for evil — I admit that came from my childhood. Thanks for your great feedback. Hugs.

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  22. That song (one of my favorites) is the perfect backdrop and inspiration for your story, Teagan. His voice is haunting, and the lyrics are, at best, a guide for our thinking. I love where your thoughts took you. The imagery is fantastic We often ignore the help and the ability we have at our disposal. Maybe there’s something to the fact that the song was originally recorded by Blind Faith. Maybe we need more of that.

    I hope the rest of this year is good to you, and I hope 2025 rocks the Teaganverse.

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    1. Haha! That’s a great benediction, Dan — “rocking the Teaganverse.” I love it.
      Honestly, I think blind faith has already gotten us into way too much trouble. Although I understand what you mean. I’m dangerously close to breaking my own “no politics” rule so I’ll stop.
      I’ve never heard Winwood do a version of that song that I don’t like.
      I know you’re going to have a heavy-duty blogging year ahead, now that you’ve taken on a second very big blogging obligation (Thursday Doors and now the weekly photo challenge thing). Wishing you the best with it all. Hugs.

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  26. Ah, yes, that weird and usually exhausting dream of trying to get home, wherever your dream decides is home! Great story, Teagan. The light of life past is often misleadingly well lit and tempting but our future lies in embracing the dark, the unknown. Your story reminds me of this famous speech from 1939 which used a quote from a poem by Minnie Haskins, In his 1939 Christmas broadcast, King George VI said, “I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way'” Although the helper in this case is the Hand of God I think the idea of trust in the dark of the unknown is well-expressed.

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    1. Dear Mandy, thank you for this beautiful comment, and for sharing the wonderful quote. I was not familiar with that. I appreciate your feedback on the story.
      The first time I shared this story (written 2 years ago) I was surprised to learn that other people had similar recurring dreams. The “can’t find my way home” dreams are even more disturbing for me, since I have debilitating agoraphobia (essentially an overwhelming fear of being away from home). I appreciate you reading and commenting. Wishing you a satisfying close to 2024. Hugs.

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