Floating Isles
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Floating Isles.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
Lantern-islands hang over black water under a full moon. Their lanterns make a second moon in the dark, broken into many small moons that shiver and reform. Roots dangle under the nearest isle, pale and wet. A waterfall leaves the roots, finds no ground, and falls toward the water in a thin white line. The line hits the black and does not raise a lasting foam.
A small wet shoe and a red ribbon turn in the current. No foot is in the shoe. No wrist is in the ribbon. Behind them the islands are only lights. An empty boat drifts with a lantern still burning, the seat dry enough to show it has not been sat in tonight. A flat stone shows under the moon, a pale oval, and then sinks out of sight again. The water closes without a story.
The waterfall slows. It stops. It hangs as a white thread that has forgotten its direction. Then it runs the wrong way, up into the roots, and the roots take the water without dripping. The upward line is thinner than the fall was. The ribbon catches the boat's gunwale and stays. The wet of it climbs a little onto the wood and stops. The shoe turns once more and remains in the water, separate from the ribbon. The boat's lantern does not go out. No one sits up in the boat.
The boat turns a few degrees and the lantern swings, throwing a small circle that finds the ribbon and loses the shoe. Roots under the isle drink the upward water and do not swell. A lantern on a farther island blinks, not out, only dimmer, and recovers. The moon on the black water stays whole beside the broken moons of the lanterns. No hand comes over the gunwale. The seat in the boat stays empty, its dry patch shrinking only where spray has reached it and then holding. The shoe's lace trails and does not knot itself to the ribbon. Distance between them increases by the length of a small wave and then holds, as if the water had decided they were finished sharing a ripple.
The islands hang where they hung. Time passes as the upward waterfall keeps its thin white line into the roots and the moon does not comment. The flat stone rises once more, shows its pale face, and sinks for good, the last look of it a shrinking oval. The ribbon darkens where it has begun to dry on the gunwale and stays wet at the tail in the water. The shoe and the ribbon no longer share the same ripple. The empty boat turns under its lantern. The second moon of lanterns holds on the water. The shoe drifts, still wet, and does not climb after the falls.
The upward water keeps its thin line and the islands do not descend.