Sleeping

He would have to go back down, his memory was failing him: was her left arm dangling or was it resting on her hip? He wanted his present to be at the measure of what he felt for her. But his hands didn't want to reproduce what his mind and his eyes saw. He could close his eyelids and see an altogether perfect image of her sleeping the long, undisturbed sleep down below. Once he opened his eyes he could only see a piece of rough stone with no specific shape – yet.
The sharp bone was precise enough but he was scared of marring the figure once again. The first one that he had made for suns and moons he had disfigured because the bone had ripped because the hammering stone had broken. The short antler had opened a large cut on the palm of his hand. It had bled profusely. The sage had shown him to put his hand into the waves; it had stung so much he had had to fight hard against the sleepiness. Then the sage had put green leaves and yellow flowers but he wasn't sure it had any effect. If he banged too hard on the antler he could sense beatings as the ones he was hearing in his chest.
Still he had to finish the figure before her spirit flew up high where the lights spangled the dark sky. The sage had said the full moon was soon to appear. He had to hurry.
He was working cross-legged on the hot ground. Bees were buzzing from bush to bush to flowers.
She had been all to him, she had meant something he couldn't name but that he could feel, even now and its loss brought him tears. He stood up. He had to go down while there was enough light.
He bent down and passed under the big stone arch. It was dark and damp. He had been shown the intricate way by the sage. No one knew it but him and those who were building it. He didn't know why she had to be put there but the temple was the best they had built. From time to time they opened a new chamber to put more people in. There you saw the remains of people that were put there suns and moons ago. Some smelt bad and were covered in red and black. Some had no eyes and you could see through to their bones.
He wouldn't like the idea of putting red on the figure he was carving. She had given him two sons and she had also been a respected sage. She had taught him and their sons so many things that the world was different now, even more so that she was gone. He felt he had to give her something in return – the figure.
It was cold down there, despite the intense buzzing heat that was baking the ground. He shivered. He passes several chambers and then he saw her, lying in the big round cave, obviously asleep. She looked calm, just a little pale. Perhaps paler than the last time he saw her. Only the sage knew when they would wake up, when their spirits would ascend to the lights.
He put the figure next to her, he would soon be finished. He would have been much quicker had his hand been whole. In the dim light he thought he saw her stir. He touched her shoulder. She was as cold as the stone of the figure. He remembered her touch at the dark of night – the warmth, the wholeness. He stroked her mane of black hair. She was almost ready for her journey upwards, lying on the vessel just like the others when they started out to the other land across the salty water.
He tried to catch as many details as possible: the navel, the folds of her robe, the hand around the stone on which she had reclined her head for the last time, her left arm resting on her right arm.
No sounds were coming from upground. Occasionally the sound of water dripping. The stench was too much for him. The bodies, the other bodies did it. And he couldn't bear it any longer. He took the figure and left.
He blinked several times to get used to the light again. He walked a few paces and crouched under a tree. He ate one of its fruits. They were like dark drops and very sweet. He liked the tough rind and the seeds inside. The taste would last for a long time in his mouth. She had shown him that the dark drops were good. He set out again to work on the figure.

Several suns have passed and when the moon will rise her spirit will depart. Every time he has to get a detail right he closes his eyes – he doesn't want to go back down, even though he doesn't remember if her left arm is on her hip or not. He can only remember something to do with her breasts. In he end he has to make her arm rest on one of her breasts and rest a little on her other arm because the stone – the stone he has chosen so carefully – he cannot carve the arm on her hip. Now he just has to polish the stone where he finished off the arm.

The sun has plunged inside the water and the light is beginning to fade. In the sky some twinkling lights can already be seen. He cannot go down in the temple with the sage, but he isn't sure that he would have liked it. He gives the figure to the man who receives it with both hands cupped held high in front of him. His sons stand up right behind him, they have the same eyes as their mother's. He hopes she will like his work and perhaps she will take it for her journey to the lights.
At first he wanted to keep it like a memory of her, but as he was seeing it every time he blinked he decided to give it to her that had liked his figures, that had been with him many suns and moons. He felt the last figure should be hers – only he isn't sure if he had the proportions right. The making of the details has taken him a long time. Perhaps he has forgotten something as sometimes the image before his closed eyes suddenly disappeared.
He watches the sage bending down and being swallowed up by the dark mouth of the temple. The moon is up.
If the image lasts long enough, he will make another one, just to remember.