Where I'm From In the Ripples of Time | nftshowroom X alienarthive challenge for January: Theme: "memories" - No 4

Where I'm From In the Ripples of Time

The night is utterly still.

The gray moon casts long shadows upon the water, exposing waves cresting toward the shore.

Up from the murky water I rise surreptitiously, eyes bulging. As the skin of the divide breaks transforming liquid to air, I pause to capture a slice of time waffling through the surrounding landscape.

The water stretches long and tolerably wide. My skin quivers at the sights and sounds of this desolate place that thrust memories past into my line of sight.

I hover between the realm of the underworld and the fantasy cloaking the now dense forest, mindful of pleasurable days past romping barefoot through the flat and featureless bed without care.

At the bank's edge, fog blankets the forest, where black trunks rise up from the depths of the mushy cold water. trees dripping with slimy moss.

Grimy garments from years of exposure to the hot, damp air cling to my lithe frame. Familiar is the time that waded through the depths, feet tingling with mud between my toes.

Blood-thirty, silent and sneaky, vermin hoover nearby, buzzing around my head. "Should we descend upon that which is at the brink?" they whisper. No fear, as amphibians croak, then leap in fright, shattering the quiet.

I open wide.

Stale water hits me the moment I do, rush into my mouth and slam up my nostrils like a bad batch of moonshine forgot to be discarded from last year.

I puke.

But recover instantly. Before I continue, my head jerks toward air bubbles rising from the putrid deep. I know what lies beneath and discard the disturbance.

Hush.

For aromas of fresh body fluids that brings satisfaction draws near.

I close my eyes and savor the sweetness of yesteryear. That lifeline of existence I once dwelt among. That sanguine liquid that now sustains my being fills my nostrils.

My pointy ear pricks back. My eyes dart furiously from side to side as I detect footsteps advancing toward the bank's edge. Wallowing, faint barks draw near, erupting into vicious growls.

Do they know? Do they understand the terror upon them? Once move further, and their destiny will entwine with mine.

Fangs tingle and engorge, extends downward in anticipation.

If memory serves me, this scene of prey and predator played out to unfortunate conclusions thousands of lifetimes.

They ignored the warnings.

The swamp is no place to wander after dark.

In the post, nftshowroom X alienarthive challenge for January: memories, NFTShowroom featured all the month's Geometry themed Art minted so far on the NFT Showroom's home page / twitter. Also, Alien Art Hive will be curating participants' blog posts. This challenge was intended for the full month of January. Participants are required to:

• make art incorporating memories theme;
• mint it on https://nftshowroom.com/;
• make a blog post about it in Alien Art Hive; and
• use #nftshowroom in your tags

Below are my steps I took to create my fourth design for this theme.

The information for my mint on NFTShowroom.

My Creation Process:

For creation of the "memories" scene in this design, I retrieved an image from the stable diffusion program, StarryAI, that depicts a half-human creature residing in the swamps. The creature has evolved to where tree roots are part of his body. In my accompanying short story, I tell the memories the creature has when he was human. I also included a pure fractals I created in the advanced fractal rendering program, Apophysis 7X.

Uploading all images into Canva, my design program, I added layers of elements to blend the images.

Images included in my design:

^{Yellow moon night reflection on water ~ Escarabajo Gigante - Contributed to the #LIL by @hernleon74 ~ Pure Fractal titled "yellow butterfly ~ Acorn barnacles & Hermit crab - Contributed to the #LIL by @akukamaruzzaman ~}

Thanks for taking the time to view my post. I hope you like my fourth mixed media project for the January memories challenge.