Beyond the Light
Chronicle 1: Beyond
the Light
Dust swirled up
off the ground as a faint breeze stirred over the silent land, exposing
the bones of vultures long starved of the dead they had once feasted upon.
The entire planet was wreathed in silence, dark and still as death. An
abrupt glow on the eastern horizon, however, was soon to become the blessed
and cursed herald of its rebirth. For the first time in years, the sun's
warm rays pierced through the cold layers of ashes from a lost civilization.
The smokey clouds
cleared quickly over the next few weeks, although the sky was still a sickly
gray as a tiny creature poked cautiously out of a scrap heap that had once
been part of a building. Seeing the bright ball looming high above, it
made a frightened noise and scurried back into the shadows. It didn't like
the ball. It reminded the animal too much of the Light....
Many days passed
before the creature dared to venture out into the open again, but the next
time it came out, the sky was dark again, as it had always been. Stopping
under the cover of a piece of sheet metal to think, the little one felt
memories stirring in its head. The sky had always been dark, although sometimes
less, sometimes more. Always dark....hadn't it been, always? Thinking harder,
the creature began to recall, brokenly at first, the days before the darkness,
when it had found its way to the outside world...escaped. Escaped what?
Escaped from something...something far below the ground. Other creatures...they
were hairless, giant, terrifying. They had put it in strange, glowing,
noisy, cramped places and poked sharp things under its skin, and made it
run around and do things it didn't understand, moving it, always moving
it, carrying and pushing and poking and cutting and staring endlessly with
beady white eyes. And then it had escaped. And then, the small, timid animal
had seen the sky....Not the sky it saw now, but a different sky. This sky
was the color of the barren earth, but the one it had seen...that sky had
been bright, like some of the liquids the hairless ones had put into its
body. Bright, vibrant, warm...it gave off warmth, from something up high...the
bright ball. The bright ball had been in the sky when first the creature
had emerged from the cold prison of the terrible hairless ones. It was
not the Light. It was something different. Something good. Suddenly the
animal felt cold and afraid in the darkness. It wanted the bright ball
to be in the sky again. Almost as if the thought were a summons, the skyline
in front of it took on a crimson color, like the blood that had stained
the waters years before. The color grew lighter with the approach of the
sun, but it scared the little creature. The glow reminded it of the fires
that had swept the land after the Light had appeared. Drawing as far back
under the sheet as it could, it curled up into a tiny, cowering ball of
fur.
When at last the
animal looked up and out of its hiding place, there was no glow. Instead,
the bright ball shone down on its head, bringing a gentle warmth to its
fur, and a calm to its fears. The bright ball was good. If it now rose
again after so long, perhaps that meant that other things would right themselves
as well. The sky and the earth would turn back to their natural colours,
and the little creature could go back to the others of its own kind, who
surely must have escaped by now as well. Its own kind....
The creature squealed
as a sharp pain seared deep within its skull, and a blinding flash like
the aweful Light returned burned its eyes. It woke up on the ground, on
its side, wondering how it had gotten in that position. Its last thought
rang clear through its head. Its own kind. But what exactly was its kind?
The animal knew what they looked like; small, short-haired, long-tailed,
with a blunt, cone-shaped head and tiny, delicate paws. And yet, the physical
image gave rise to something else...a mental concept, one that encompassed
all that it was and yet, more...a description...a name. "Mouse," the creature
said, then jumped, startled at the strange noise that had come from its
mouth. After a few moments of bafflement, it tried it again, uncertainly.
"M...mo-ow-ss...mooouuse...mouse." Mouse. That was its name. That was what
it was.
Marvelling at
its newfound power of sound-making, and at the wonderful new feeling of
identity that came with its ability to name itself, Mouse set about naming
the other things familiar to it. First was the good, warm bright ball in
the sky. Concentrating hard on the feel of the description in its head,
Mouse began to vocalize. "B...b-rha-it...b...rih-ite...bright. Bright!
Bright...bo...b...bah...baaa-wl...bright...ball...bright ball. Bright ball."
Although Mouse was happy that he had been able to form the new sounds,
the name just seemed somehow lacking. Mouse thought it should have another
name, a different one. Strangely, it felt as if Mouse already knew it,
that he just had to remember...."S...sa...sssaaaaln?" It was close, but
it still didn't sound quite right. "Ssssaaaa...sssssa...sa-suh...suh...nn....Sun!"
There! That was the name of the bright ball. Sun. The little creature was
very happy. It liked that things had names. It was Mouse, and the bright
ball that warmed Mouse from the sky was Sun.
All over the world,
other creatures, big and small, were crawling out of the subterranean levels
of collapsed structures, out into the light of the bright ball in the sky.
They, too, were frightened at first. They, too, realized that the bright
ball wasn't the horrible Light that had sent wind, flame, and death sweeping
across the planet. They, too, remembered Sun, the time before the darkness
when Sun had shone in the sky, giving warmth and comfort as it did now,
the hairless ones and their tortures in captivity from the outside and
Sun. They, too, remembered their names.
