Note: This is just from the POV of a Thembrian prisoner on Bedeviled Island. Not supposed to be Professor Crackpotkin. Just a random guy. Anyway, hope its ok.
Cataclysm
Here on Bedeviled Island, the sun shines.
The warden...He says we're being punished for insubordination, for violation of Thembrian government protocol, for theft of the Thembrian rations, for playing in the snow...
Does it matter?
No.
The only thing to think about is that we are here. That we are being punished. Of course, I know something that even our beloved warden doesn't know.
There is so much to say, and I feel I could go on and on about the cataclysmic effects that the sun brings on us - all of us.
Before being brought here to the island, I had never seen the sun. Not once in my entire life. Did I know what a sun was? Of course. I had seen pictures, heard it mentioned here and there. Ever since I was very young, I had been intensely curious about it. That something as bright as the sun could exist - could light up the entire sky and make beautiful all that it touches - was unfathomable to me (and probably to most Thembrians.)
Each year that passed in Thembria seemed more miserable than the last. Each year seemed to add wood to the fire that was my desire - to see the sun with my own eyes, to feel it on my face, to see firsthand the effect of its glistening rays.
Years upon years later, when I felt that my longing to see something other than grey skies would kill me - for I felt I couldn't last another year in this grey, dead world - I was arrested. My crime was attempting to stowaway on a foreign craft, in an obviously futile attempt to leave the country and see this world - my world - from an outsider's perspective. And all without obtaining sufficient permission and filling out mile-high stacks of paperwork. Even if I had done all of that, there was no guarantee I would have been allowed to leave the country.
Needless to say, it was a serious offense, therefore, I was sent to Bedeviled Island Maximum Security Prison.
How ironic.
In being prevented from achieving my goal, they had inadvertently taken me right to it.
I remember my first steps off of the plane. Being led down the stairs, the soldiers in front of me and behind me, loathing the tightness of the shackles on my wrists.
...Then all existence was blinded by a light.
I shut my eyes tight, nearly stumbling on the stairs in the process, for I had never seen the sun (was that what had nearly blinded me so?) in person until that moment. My sensitive eyes were used to seeing dull, grey skies - not flashing blue ones lit by a burning orb millions of miles away.
I opened my eyes, and instantly forgot the presence of the soldiers surrounding me, the iron grip of the shackles. Then my eyes grew wide, marveling at the way the sun lit up everything under its scorching gaze. I did not know the world could be so bright.
Later, I was to learn what a gift and a curse it would be living under the sun (especially if you were at Bedeviled Island Prison.) Colonel Slammer cleverly uses the heat to our disadvantage. My first day in one of those heat boxes, I was positive I wouldn't survive.
But I did, and the Earth kept turning. The sun kept shining.
I could write a book on the differences between the heat of the sun and the cold of the snow. While both are cruel in their own way, the heat is cruel in a very, very specific way. It stifles the breath and drives one mad. The iron shackles grow heavier, burning the wrists with a white-hot pain. I often feel that I can't breath. My body that was made for cold can't take much more - and to think I had been waiting my whole life for the sun.
Is it fair? Of course not.
But the sun is as fair as a blizzard, meaning not fair at all. Nature isn't fair - just cruel. Maybe my non-existent life back home wasn't so bad. I've often thought about the cold nights and the howling winds, the dismal sky and the cheerless atmosphere. Was it so bad? No one is happy here, either. Out of the icebox, and into the fire. Perhaps freedom can't be found in this world. Life itself seems to be nothing more than one long prison sentence that ends only on the day you die.
But I feel like a fool. How can you hate and love something at the same time?
I love the sun. Yet, I hate it.
And I could tell that the heat was taking its toll, even on Slammer. After all, he, too, was a Thembrian and more inclined to cold weather. The sun let no one escape its punishment. We were all prisoners here, even the warden himself. And though the sun is punishment in and of itself, and though the heat boxes are the worst kind of torture a Thembrian could receive, even colonel Slammer doesn't understand that we are being given a gift.
In Thembria, one may live an entire lifetime without seeing the sun rise or set.
On the island, it stares down at us, folding its fiery arms and punishing us with its glare. It never hides. Never stops. Never weakens. It is as deadly as a Thembrian blizzard.
And what they don't know, is that it is a gift. Yet, a curse.
It is both love and hate. Good, and evil.
It is a cataclysm.