Teodoro and Teodoro, come upon the field about which so much has been alluded, found themselves attending their allision.
—
They stood outside the property, directed at the wooden fence, three weathered plank rows and equally weathered fenceposts intersecting the planks at presently unmeasured but roughly equivalent intervals. There was wild grass growing unlandscaped on the near side, and as well as on the far side, unharried save where the ground-in fenceposts got in the way of it growing, and where the lowest planks turned the blades away at curling angles. It moved occasional, all those high air ripples that make a wind.
The fence offered little objection to would-be intruders invited or not. Teodoro, next to Teodoro, opened Teodoro's backpack, reached into it, took from it a red folder, and opened it, flipping through the documents until he stopped. He ran his hand across one paper until he stopped on a line with simple mathematical formulas meant to describe dimensions. He looked up at the field and fence and all the rest, looked back at the paper, closed the folder and put it back into Teodoro's backpack, which he then closed. Teodoro had not stopped looking ahead, wavering between the fence and just above it.
Until his backpack had been shut, at which time Teodoro started walking onward, his feet dropped off the dirt trail and interfered into the prairie grass, his walk aimed to a fence segment adjacent to the gate. Teodoro waited, looked towards the fence and then in the direction of his brother, feet disappeared and came back from sunken into the grass with ceaseless ease. He ran his hands along the fronts of his pants, and the back, felt all his pockets flat, and bounced forward aimed towards his brother. Teodoro floated at ever greater heights as he hurried on the husk-dry tufts.
Teodoro gripped the leftward fencepost at that interval, shook it a bit, moved his hands to the highest plank and pressed into it gently. A few wobbles, a slight give, but it held. He brushed his hands after, a small amount of wood dust and a few could-be were he unlucky splinters fluttered off. And he hopped an easy clamor his way over. His shoes cavaled in and out spoon grooves and plastered their souls themselves on flats where the knots were flat colors, hands atop the whole way through. Then Teodoro came, the same way but quicker, over. Each brushed more wood dust and could-be were either he unlucky splinters from their hands, and Teodoro bent into the long rich sunbleached grass and brushed traces of bootgrit from his fingertips. Arisen, the mark had dulled but remained traces. And Teodoro and Teodoro stood in the long rich sunbleached grass. They looked up, at this long rich stretch of cloudless sky. Teodoro looked at Teodoro, Teodoro looked at Teodoro, each flushed enough to almost be a mirror.
The fence maintained wide behind each of them, and long at the backs of their addressing heads, ahead of tree groves further on past. And there was still all the long rich sunbleached grass lingering ahead in the still direction of their negligibly swiveled hips. It carries on up to the last wall of the fence and after it as well all along with this stretch of long rich cloudless sky above up until far-flung mountains at which the long rich sunbleached grass dissolves into the horizon. All with nothing but the final width of fencing between the mountains and Teodoro and Teodoro, who were standing in the soft wild grass upon the property.
And they aimed back in the direction of the mountains and walked atop and into the grass that left brief glances then quickly rebounded as if no shoes had ever graced them. Each head rounded this way and that. Teodoro's arms hung around, they swayed, they rotated, and they touched nothing. Nothing but the air and what imaginable dandruff may or may not sift through it. Teodoro's hands raised and lowered close together, holding a black and yellow disposable camera, lifted to his face and it's and pushing snaps into the air at no specific intervals.
Steps and snaps and glances and repetition. For a moment Teodoro bent forward, his waterbottle handle bounced and clinked against the flask. Each hand sat upon a kneecap, his upper body bent towards a dark lump. It was calcified animal leavings. When Teodoro rose Teodoro did not take a picture. When Teodoro rose Teodoro smirked. Just after, just as he was not taking a picture, Teodoro smirked as well. At times into the anonymity came flying Teodoro's foot, it swung in near pendular expanse when Teodoro would kick a tuft of grass and it would scatter mostly forward, relative Teodoro, as well as this way and that. Occasionally amid these momentous intrusions Teodoro punted a small stone. Not one made a noise whenever it landed, or sooner vanished into the grasses. Teodoro saw large stones as well and never punted them. Teodoro had seen stones of the full range of sizes as well. Some of the pictures hinged around their directions. They did this across countless proportions in nearfar fenceposts. And all the laterals become infinite. And the mountains waiting with the air above never did grow any closer, or more distant. And the sun did not look to move a wink. And there were still no clouds. And there still was airwind strumming the grass.
Eventually, after all but the most recently quilted blades of grass had forgotten the effort Teodoro and Teodoro's steps and feet had undertaken, Teodoro came upon a pit. His dipped into it while taking one more picture in the high direction of some of the arbor hedges. Before he could fall further than a lurch Teodoro grabbed his backpack and Teodoro's backpack straps incized into the clefts below his clavicle where his shoulders meet his torso and Teodoro stopped falling, halted in a jagged manner, and he clenched up just enough to keep hold in his hands the camera, which was now angled about forty degrees further downward. And Teodoro, his left hand gripped into the backpack fabric, his outstretched left arm recording the level at which the camera had last been, crested himself back and pulled Teodoro back upright, until Teodoro was upright and unclenched, left foot again on mostly level padded ground. At which time Teodoro let go of Teodoro's backpack only for a moment, before he placed both hands back on that backpack, opened it up and withdrew and unfolded a shovel. Teodoro in that time bent himself downward and clicked a picture of the divot. Then each Teodoro turned the other way, and Teodoro did the same, and Teodoro let his hands again be useless for any task past holding the unfolded shovel.
Teodoro began digging. And Teodoro did the same. The divot was around a circle about less than a foot in diameter and itself a balding patch among the grass. Little unknitting was done as the two bent bodies each displaced pale green-flecked loam out from what was becoming a hole and into two loosely identical mounds found to the holing divot's local west and east. Faded brown mounds with dry grass worming little incisions. All four figures and their equipments carried on for some time. The bodies bent, the shovels moved and shoulders and elbows and hips and knees and ankles, one a slight nub newly swollen, all did too, as did two tiding backpacks, as did mounds that grew, as did those grass insinuations tickling the air, as did their hairscrub statements tickling the air, as did those beads of sweat that did make it all the way to earth before evaporating, down in the same direction as their eyes and rumbling heads. And after this went on and on and as with so many steps the impressions became irrelevant changed until in an opposing jag to Teodoro's tumble except with no changed angles Teodoro's elbow jutted back and his shoulder claviculated accordingly because his shovel jutted into something. And with his shovel Teodoro scraped more earth away until enough had been exposed to show a surface made of gold. Teodoro and Teodoro scrubbed the dirt away with their shovels their bodies and their objects rotating all the more but entrenching down no deeper, and the mounds to local east and west growing still, but more slowly, and at less continuous intervals. Until the surface grew enough to be a conclusion, and start again sinking in two sets of parallels that all reached a collective destination for the sake of one single depth. A clean cut rectangle without any sign on any of the five visible surfaces. No dent or scuff or identification or any demarcation of existence or difference save their durations and the fact of their being here and having been hidden and objecting to involution and bearing on that top face a forgettable gradient in a sprinkling of dirt.
Both set down their shovels and rose. Teodoro turned towards Teodoro and Teodoro turned away from Teodoro and Teodoro and took a hand towel from Teodoro's backpack, which had been left open. Teodoro's backpack had been left open too but nothing was now taken from it. Teodoro used the towel to pick up the bar of gold, the one to the local east, brush off any last dirt that had carried on as they got up from the ground, and deposit the bar from his toweled hands into Teodoro's backpack, some small contortions all along the way, all without touching the bar of gold except through the distance of the hand towel, grey green and comfortably rough. After this Teodoro zipped Teodoro's backpack and turned around and Teodoro turned around and Teodoro contorted and took Teodoro's shovel from the ground and dusted it off as well. This took longer than the bar of gold, though his hands gripped the shovel itself freely all the way to again folding it and depositing it with the gold into Teodoro's backpack, which he then zipped. Teodoro had been taking pictures this way and that as Teodoro carried on. He captured the divot and then the hole. He captured the mounds. And then Teodoro contorted once more to this time grab his own shovel and they did all of that again. Once both shovels were in Teodoro's backpack he zipped Teodoro's backpack and then turned away from Teodoro, shook out the towel and rolled it into a cord, turned back to Teodoro, and tied the towel into the loop strap at the top of Teodoro's backpack. And he brushed off his hands and let them hang at his sides. Teodoro and Teodoro adjusted themselves yet again to face their fresh dug empty hole and the mounds beside it.
Teodoro again raised the camera in his free hands to the proper angles and took another two pictures, an east picture, and, after, a west picture. And they paused, slack. And feet next to unmoving they crested their downstretched heads this way and that. Without turning they each took a few steps back and Teodoro, angled slightly higher, took two more pictures. From wholly uprighted position they each posed once more, Teodoro long enough and Teodoro long enough for Teodoro to raise his arms again and snap another picture. And Teodoro and Teodoro began walking almost straight save for slightly lilting westward, almost towards the center gate at the far end. These steps were hardly different than any prior had been, there might have been a slight bit more sink. Teodoro might have walked a slight bit quicker, or with more rejection in each step. The sun did not let up. Sound rippled about. Teodoro's arms hung and drifted at his sides. Teodoro snapped a few more pictures.
And soon enough they hefted themselves over the same fence interval in reminiscent fashion, swished their hands clean of dirt and would-be were they unlucky splinters and each paused to wipe bootgrit from their hands into the grass and came back up hands paler than when they bent but more shaded than before they began this second clamor. And a few steps more they found themselves standing firmer on the dirt path leading to a gate that at no point had they unlocked. Their backs to the property. Their persons turned towards an expanse that rolled and spired such that had there been no fence now behind them it would look as if nothing had happened. And they got to walking.
—
Nobody said there would be a hill, and the keys not in his pocket and not in the folder and now not in his hand jangled once again all as wordlessly. There was an altitude wind, nobody said there would be that either but he could have expected that, he had expected that, he had been here long enough by now, and the folder no longer in his hand fluttered all as noiselessly, so many documents ignored at the clock's offset hour rippling all the louder. There was to be some autohoisting, some light acrobatics in this phase of navigation. That had been spoken of, if not exactly. And before it began he heard stories of a bad dream's stone built boarders. Heard them again, as he has before, before. Now those unnew words flush below his shoe, his shoe, and crunch an occasional dusty pebble. Large gravel that'd clack against the embankment on ahead. At least, rocks along the reaches or not, woodslats were as advertised, and thus an underwhelming effort to clamor. And so, grooves graced and scuff marks to be shuffled off after if he had time, if he didn't think they made the false escarpment look more rightly rustic, trapped or claimstaked inside all those unexpected arrears of trees, another arrear enjambed amid a grassland's feral reassertions, he was inside, an arrear ahead of human rock formations, he was inside, he was inside. It was the property on offer.
It was a soft landing and the turf was raw as ever, unkempt and empty. Call it dappled, that was a fitting dictate to fill the space with something other than timeclumps and ruggery. There were those too but it needed more, some light to be watched by. Light cannot be bested by pineweft curtains as comes apparent in the due time that is no more a loan than the few casino tokens one might manage to hold onto until the end of the night. The night that never ends, the night that is the day where there is not a cloud let alone a sun with any intention to set. So much to see by. So much flash for the camera. Not even a need for a single click. What was there to be reminisced. He looked around, he left his hands at his sides. He'd already scrubbed his hands off and was thinking about the utility of gloves. They would have made this so much cleaner, the floor could not be trusted. It took notes. He did not, except the ones he told himself and chuckled. Except the ones he made without meaning to. The metal twists that come with a well-stocked accompaniment. There were moments of worry at these. Guns had not been mentioned but...you know...and he knows...or at least he was one for distrust and a suspension of heretical doubt where faith may keep him safer. The decided dictates become words to live by depending on the right arrangement of the armaments. That might not matter here, with all this nothing to watch. With all this nothing in which to hide. Expanse and saturation, how different are they really, he had to ask. At least this ground might cover his tracks too. It was not much for relenting to others' blunter notes, whatever better-knit missives it might abide. That was the message of his steps. The message to him, arms at his sides, arms akimbo, arms bent and body bent and then he studies midway disintegration and decomposing objects and thinks back to all those messages he found in the resuscitation den. And in the excavation chambers. Dead letter legality and an esoteric law resurrected less as itself than as a new obscurity. Or as itself. How to say without scalpling the details. But these one's were so unclean and so much less than what they could have been. Wet metal made more insinuations. There were more chuckles and kicked tufts. They did not make sounds when and where they landed. They were not meant to. He did not touch anything that might remember him as anything more formal than the wind. Drafts made it through. What was there to stop it?
Nary the traps. This time he caught himself before the blood pooled more burstingly. He jangled so much safer, safely quieter, in case he was not so actually alone. When he found himself stopped this time just before the trap actually clasped him and instead he was staring at the hint of a precut break in the floorplane and was glad to see that the excavation took only minor digging and shreds of displaced shrub guts and now unnetted dust into a deep that was to expected no matter how much it had gone unsaid. It wasn't like the hill. It wasn't like the clamor. It was in between them. It was also under them, leave a third dimension aside for the sake of brevity, and another for sake of sinking only in shallow air, and you remember the unsaid sense that a hidden pit easily found and excavated was always the only answer that let in the slightest bit of sense. When you talk about enough somethings what are you to conclude other than that something is down there on top of which to make shit up about. Even if all that's there is the idea of the hole. Or the empty hole that you can fill with all your notions.
Or in this case, as became clear to him after the uprigging and the exit stage heft, actually something for which a hole in a hill might be worth considering. Best not doing where you'd find oil. He figured. Before he discussed whether petroleum grows just as readily under elevated ground. An inconclusive solicism. Forgotten once there was something, finally, there to consider. Something to steep oneself in with. Something sparkling in greyed light mire begotten of the sense that everything is essentially a degredaded shadow after it's done looking headlong at the unending sun. And he slid his living gyre limbs into the he'll call it gray to better get at the sparkles under the surface making a gradient. He was careful with his fingers. The details were a mystery and when he thinks about how it's the ultraviolets that leave the worst scars who knows what else could happen to raw fingers in direct contact with divine chemistry. It was enough to look, and finger gently, sliver quickly, be mercurial and leave no traces, and take only what he needed to show them. All his reportage on plutonic hermitology. That is what everyone asked for. Whether or not it belongs to his blame.
So then he left. And hefted himself back he haggard way and gently reassessed sinking this time in the form of an unsuffocating hill, all maneuvers meant to let whoever wanted to say so that he had never been there, himself, himself, the most inccluded of them all. Once more, once more, walking.
—
And Teodoro, his water bottle no longer empty and his backpack a little heavier, and Teodoro, his water bottle refilled yet his backpack also a little heavier, set back east ahead of the story about a family they had no further interest in, and so did not wish to speak about which any further. Except in the shapes of Teodoro's eyebrows, which danced each time his lashes snapped, to kill time until the plane landed, and they could reconsider all the foolishness which wrote lights into a phone screen and a certain ledger.